Philosophy For Children ( P4C) : Optimal Educational Development

Why Philosophy?

Philosophy For Children (P4C) does not refer to teaching children traditional philosophy, rather, it is a pedagogic approach developed by Mathew Lipman, during the early 1970s, when he was a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. It is certainly not intended to be esoteric and opaque, nor a dry academic pursuit, but a living, breathing, stimulating learning experience that focuses on openness and clarity in terms of teaching elementary thinking skills and the ability to question and reason. Furthermore, it is a student-led, enquiry based approach to learning: ( Community of Enquiry)

It originated out of concerns that schools were turning pupils into passive learners who expected to be told what to think. There was a fear, prevalent among more progressive educationalists, that schools were?providing poor preparation for further learning and for life itself. Additionally, Lipman was deeply dismayed at the lack of consciousness awareness among well - educated citizens during the Vietnam war. The same moral judgement could easily be applied to media ' informed' reactions to significant wars in recent times. To counteract such passivity and apathy, Lipman considered philosophy to be an exemplary resource that could be deployed to help children become more intellectually energetic, curious, critical, creative and reasonable.

In an interview with Julie Winyard, back in 2004. Lipman waxes lyrical about this novel approach to teaching:

'They are really thinking! Children can be original! In the community of enquiry children can be creative and sociable with ideas. It is an environment where they don’t just converse like volleying before a tennis game! They start to develop roles within the community of enquiry. Some children will raise questions, others will look for connections – relationships between ideas. They will start to depend more on one another. You will see an interdependence developing.'?( Fischer, 2004, p.44)

Lipman, was concerned with the Deweyan notion of creating an education for a healthy democracy: an education that would develop a critical citizenry with respect and empathy for others in the community.

Whilst P4C includes a whole curriculum developed by Lipman and his associates, it is essentially a strict, yet simple, model of learning: ‘Community of Enquiry’, that can be used in any subject: from arts, ethics to maths or sciences. In this model, a group of children are given a stimulus, such as a story or scientific problem – and?they?are asked to generate questions from it about anything problematic, puzzling or interesting, consequently deciding the framework of the ‘Enquiry’.?The group then reasons together out loud - putting forward ideas, responding to and building on the ideas of others and generating further questions until they are satisfied with how they have dealt with the problem. They are then asked to reflect on the answers that emerge from the dialogue and their learning. The content of the discussion is considered to be less important than the quality of the reasoning, and the role of the teacher is to develop higher level of reasoning, through using guiding questions, for example encouraging use of examples, reasons, criteria.

Lipman calls this model ‘Community of Enquiry’, and the community or ‘groupwork’ aspect is considered to be of equal importance to the philosophical enquiry. Through vocalising their thinking together, and using the language of enquiry students, learn how to think ‘reasonably’. From Lipman's perspective, reasoning is a discursive, group activity

Critically, students also engage in important social and co-operative experiences that develop listening, empathy, respect, friendship and the ability to truly work and think co-operatively.?In fact, Lipman talks of the 4C’s of P4C: the development of Critical, Creative, Co-operative and Caring thinking skills.

' Each student is regarded as having the potential to make valuable contributions to the topics under consideration. Students are encouraged to develop good listening skills, responsiveness to what others say, willingness to try to support one’s own ideas with good reasons, and openness to the possibility that one should modify one’s beliefs in light of new considerations.' ( Splitter and Sharp, 1995, p.6 )

Essentially, the classroom is designed to reinforce the student’s potential for?reasonableness. This involves more than being able to engage in skillful reasoning, but being open and respectfully exchanging ideas.

According to Lipman,'?There are set stages in the development of the community of enquiry in the classroom. First you read the story or poem round the group and then you call for questions. These are based on something puzzling or problematic, something mysterious that the child wants to explore. If, of course, they don't see anything problematic you're probably on to a dead duck! However when you get the questions, write them on the board with the child's name beside them. The next step is to ask the child to clarify, explain exactly what their question means so everyone in the group can understand. Philosophy is about meaning. Science is about truth. As they explain their question. the teacher can ask, 'Does this question move the enquiry along? How could it be re-phrased?' Then the children can vote for the question they like best or the child who has not offered a question could be asked to choose a question to start the discussion.?( Fischer, 2004, p.44)

Research has clearly shown that P4C improves cognitive abilities of participants, developing general thinking and reasoning skills that lead to higher levels of attainment across the curriculum .As the Lipman curriculum was put into practice and evaluated, it became clear that it was a significant educational intervention. Controlled studies showed that it had a positive impact on young people’s reading and reasoning skills, and on their interpersonal relationships. Further information about this can be found here:

Additionally, P4C has been found to have great success in improving motivation by improving levels of understanding, confidence and student ownership of learning. An additional asset of the P4C approach is that it develops learning-to -learn skills – through it’s ‘thinking out loud’ approach and emphasis on questioning and reflection.

Not surprisingly, interest in the curriculum and practice of ‘Philosophy for Children’ arose in other countries. From early on, the IAPC welcomed teachers and philosophy professors from around the world to its courses and workshops, and began offering workshops beyond the USA. The IAPC curriculum was translated and adapted in scores of countries. Following a P4C workshop in Denmark in 1983, the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) was formed, and since then the practice of thoughtful dialogue in communities of inquiry has been adopted in over 60 countries.

Nevertheless, it is still generally believed, that children are not capable of high degrees of reasoning, Cognitive psychologists , heavily influenced by Piaget, claim that the mental capacity for reasoning is not present until a person has reached a certain age of maturity (the formal operations stage, at around the age of eleven) Due to this, it is assumed by many people involved in education that young children cannot think in an abstract way nor can they formulate logically valid arguments.

However, the basic assumption behind?Philosophical Enquiry?is that thinking skills are in fact more basic than reading, writing or doing mathematics. When young children engage in philosophical inquiry their dialogues can be very deep and profound. Children begin to consider questions which major philosophers have asked for thousands of years .i.e. the relationship between mind and body the problem of free will etc.

For example , an unassuming 96 page novel for middle-school children, Lipman’s first novel,?Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, features Harry and his 5th?grade classmates. Adults occasionally enter in, but the primary philosophical work is done by the children. Harry and his friends discover several basic concepts and rules of Aristotelean logic; and they puzzle over questions about the nature of thought, mind, causality, reality, knowledge and belief, right and wrong, and fairness and unfairness.

“What?is?Harry Stottlemeier’s discovery?”?Harry’s readers might ask. This question is not directly answered. However, one candidate stands out among the many things that Harry discovers in the course of exploring questions about logic, knowledge, reality, and the mind. Harry and his classmates are asked to write a paper on the topic, “The Most Interesting Thing in the World.” Entitled?Thinking, Harry’s essay begins:

'To me, the most interesting thing in the whole world is thinking. I know that lots of other things are also very important and wonderful, like electricity, and magnetism and gravitation. But although we understand them, they can’t understand us. So thinking must be something very special.' ( Lipman, 1974)

After writing several more paragraphs, Harry puts his paper aside. Later he thinks, “In school, we think about math, and we think about spelling, and we think about grammar. But who every heard of thinking about thinking?” So, he adds one more sentence to his paper: 'If we think about electricity, we can understand it better, but when we think about thinking, we seem to understand ourselves better.' ( Lipman, 1974)

Without using the word ‘philosophy,’ either here or anywhere else in?Harry, Lipman shows Harry engaged in serious philosophical thought, “thinking about thinking.” This, we might say, reveals Harry’s discovery of the joys of philosophical thinking. However, there is more. Harry also notices that, as interesting and important as thinking about thinking is, it seems to have no special place in school. Finally, although his paper begins in the first person, it quickly moves to ‘we’ and focuses on what might be accomplished?with others?in the classroom.

According to Lev Vygotsky, ‘learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organised, specifically human psychological function’ (Vygotsky.1978, p.90) Social learning, he contended, should precede any other form of development. In stark contrast to Piaget, he argued that social interaction is the basis of higher modes of thinking. Vygotsky believed that children are born with elementary mental functions – attention, sensation, perception and memory – significantly more than Piaget’s sensorimotor child. It is through cultural and social interaction that they can develop techniques to reach higher mental functions.

The Zone of Proximal Development

This intellectual transformation ideally happens in “The Zone of Proximal Development”.?First, there is what we can do on our own. Then there is the Zone of Proximal Development, which represents what we can do with the help of an adult, a friend, technology, or what Vygotsky called the?More Knowledgeable Other.?This notion, which seems to be evident in P4C, enables individuals to actualise their full learning potential.

Others have also offered criticisms of Piaget’s theories. For example, Donaldson (1978) believed that children’s reasoning is considered to be more sophisticated than Piaget’s research had originally implied. Tasks have to make ‘human sense’ to children

Clearly, a major source of difference between children and adults is that children know less, However, this does not mean that they are incapable of reasoning:

'While children learn language from adults, they are not blank slates as regards their conceptual system. As they learn the terms of their language, they must map these onto the concepts they have available to them. Their conceptual system provides the hypotheses concerning word meanings. Thus, the language they actually construct is constrained both by the language they are hearing and the conceptualization of the world they have already constructed ( Carey, 1988, p.174.)

This does not mean that children possess the professional expertise of a philosopher. Certainly, they are not yet able to use sophisticated language in order to express their ideas. However, it is important to recognise that this has nothing to do with the quality of their ideas, rather it reveals that they have not yet acquired the knowledge or skills to articulate them further.

However, the chances of a P4C approach being adopted within mainstream education seem to be slim in current times. Alas, perceived problems. and myths about P4C, are compounded by the increasing pressure on teachers to demonstrate that their students are performing at satisfactory levels in already established subjects. Standardised tests are commonly used as the measure of student achievement. Marked by definitive, unambiguous questions and answers, these tests do not place a premium on philosophical reflection.

Indeed, it can be argued that, due to the current narrowing of the curriculum within schools (rigid SATs based assessments in English and Maths are?de rigueur?here in the U.K for those making the transition from Primary School to Secondary School), is that there is a requirement for children to only use their skills in a limited way. In marked contrast, a pedagogy that includes critical thinking skills would encourage meta- cognition and readdress the current imbalance. In order to develop comprehensive perspectives, philosophy attempts to understand connections. Given this key notion, it is important to recognise that a curriculum that divides students’ education into discrete, self-contained disciplines without encouraging philosophical questions about the nature of those disciplines and their relationships to one another invites a fragmented view of education.?

It can be argued, contra to the kind of defeatism I have outlined, that the introduction of philosophy would enhance the entire educational experience of students. It is not more than simply the introduction of one more subject in the schools. Philosophy invites students to reflect on relationships among different areas of inquiry and to make sense of their educational experiences as a whole. This can add to the meaningfulness of students’ education as a whole. In addition, philosophy can make important contributions to another area of concern that cuts across the curriculum. The development of critical thinking skills is crucial here:

'We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based…. The ideal critical thinking is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit.' (Facione, 1989)

With this in mind, Margaret Donaldson ( renowned Scottish child psychologist), contra to Piaget, points out that children are not merely thinking machines, but active, creative beings.

' Some of the skills we value most highly in our educational system are alien to the spontaneous modes of functioning of the human mind.' ( Donaldson, 1978, p.7)

Consequently, children require more stimulating environments, better suited to their individual needs: Donaldson argues that children are actually very capable thinkers at all ages, but that effort must be made to communicate to them in a way they can understand. As adults, teachers are inclined towards formal modes of thinking, ' to the point where they find it hard to appreciate that degrees of abstractness which present no difficulty to them may render a task senseless and bewildering to a child.' ( Donaldson, 1978, p.18)

For Donaldson: Piaget underestimated young children, via the pre- operational stage because the tasks that he tested on children were not natural and child-friendly. Donaldson redesigned the tasks by presenting them in more familiar contexts. In the results, within familiar circumstances, introduced by familiar adults using language that makes sense to them, children show signs of logical thinking much earlier than Piaget claimed.

To conclude, I feel that P4C can provide many benefits in terms of children's learning and development. If taken seriously within educational circles, the type of philosophical reasoning it endorses can produce dramatic effects. It can lead to self- improvement and can empower individuals. On a wider scale, it can impact society in a number of positive ways. For example, it can create a more critically engaged citizenry, and more active engagement in the political sphere, where important decisions are made that affect everyone.

Reference List:

Carey, S. ( 1988) ' Conceptual Differences Between Children and Adults'. Available at: https://www.harvardlds.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Carey.-1988.-Conceptual-Differences-Between-Children-and-Adults.pdf (harvardlds.org)

Donaldson M. (1978)?Children`s Minds. London: Fontana.

Facione, P. (1989) ' Report on Critical Thinking,' American Philosophical Association Subcommittee on Pre-College Philosophy, University of Delaware.

Fisher, R. ( 2004) Teaching Thinking and Creativity Magazine, Issue 15, Winter 2004. Donaldson M (1978) Children`s Minds London: Fontana.

Lipman, M. (1974)?Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children.

Splitter, L. and Sharp, A. M. (1995)?Teaching for Better thinking: The Classroom Community of Inquiry, Hawthorn, Vic.: Australian Council for Educational Research

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978)?Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.?Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.