Teaching-Thinking-–-the-Practice-of-Philosophy-with-Children

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Teaching Thinking – The Practice of Philosophy with Children

Daniela G. Camhy

We stand on a threshold of political, social, economical, and technological revolution that leads to farreaching consequences for all social systems. The rapid social and economic change requires considering conventional values, flexibility and global thinking. We know educational needs at all levels have changed.

Education’s challenge will be to shape the cognitive skills, interpersonal sensibilities, and cultural sophistication of children and youth – but that are not kind of things that can simply be transmitted.

There is a need first to analyse the changes that globalisation is bringing about in our daily experiences and to become conscious of how the dynamics of globalisation are affecting our senses, our thinking, our values and our lifestyles. So many questions occur: How can we best prepare pupils and students to succeed in the 21st century? What basics and skills does a person need to survive and contribute to this world? Which skills, competencies, strategies, attitudes … are essential for reflection, for better understanding, for good judgement and reasonable behaviour?

One important goal of education is helping young people to develop their ability to think for themselves in responsible way. That means to learn how to think more reflectively and therefore to acquaint children with the tools that are required to think well.

Philosophy provides children with methodology of linguistic and logical analysis, but it brings more than conceptual clarity, it involves the development of each person’s skills to compare, to examine, to inquire and to think. Philosophy is the discipline that considers alternative ways of acting, creating, speaking and thinking. Philosophy as we know it from Plato is critical, creative and imaginative. To discover alternatives philosophers persistently appraise and examine their own assumptions and presuppositions question what other people normally take for granted and speculate imaginatively concerning ever more comprehensive frames of reference.

As Richard J Bernstein, American philosopher and Vera List Professor, pointed out, “The cliché is that it is easy to ask questions, but hard to give answers. But the truth is the art of questioning that is difficult and fragile. Serious questioning requires knowing what to question and how. That which has always distinguished the greatest philosophers is their ability to question what no one else had thought to question, and thereby to challenge the pre-judgements and prejudices of which most of us are unaware, even though we hold them.“1 Critical thinking, creativity and freedom programs in philosophy support the search for meaning and understanding in a globalized world. People who live together with people from other cultures have to be very sensitive to differences and similarities and have to be open to new ideas and alternative ways of thinking, acting and living.

In the late 1960`s Matthew Lipman, professor for Logic at Columbia University and pioneer of Philosophy for Children, came to the conclusion that there is a need of a philosophical curriculum that would help young people to improve their thinking skills in a multidimensional way2. He founded and developed a program, in which the philosophical content is adapted to the children`s interest and needs. It is presented in form of novels which relate semantically, logical, aesthetical and ethical experiences of every day life. For every age group he wrote different novels that cover different philosophical problems.

He developed them for young people to explore themes selected from the history of philosophy. The characters within the novels function as models to the members of the community of inquiry, which he calls the “fictional community of inquiry”3. Together with his colleagues he also developed accompanying 1 2 3

Bernstein, Richard, J.: Does Philosophy Matter? In: Thinking, Vol.9 No. 4, 1991 p.4.

Thinking in a multidimensional way means critical, creative and caring thinking.

Lipman, Matthew: Thinking in Education. Cambrige, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 51.

32 instructional materials for teachers. Now after more than thirty years Philosophy for Children has already been established in over fifty nations worldwide.

According to Matthew Lipman: “... one cannot become educated oneself unless one relives and re-enacts the struggle that mankind went through to find the so-called answers that we accept today. The good teacher is one who recognises that the child is unable to take a statement for granted. Such a teacher knows that a reliving or re-experiencing of the entire inquiry process to arrive at the truth of the statement is essential in coming to appreciate meaningful knowledge”4.

Knowledge begins in doing, it is active. It is in the course of putting ideas to the test of experience that growth occurs. John Dewey, one of the leading American pragmatists and teacher of Mathew Lipman, requires that pupils be given wide opportunities for purposive inquiry. Education therefore has to provide the learner with the knowledge of how to ask questions rather then just giving examples of how to solve problems or how to give answers.

Charles Sanders Peirce, founder of the American pragmatism and teacher of Johne Dewey, defined inquiry as a process we engage in to move ourselves from a state of uncertainty and doubt to a state of “belief”, which we might call “knowledge” or “certainty”. For Peirce good inquiry is an important social activity, inquiry begins with "some surprising phenomenon, some experience which either disappoints an expectation, or breaks in upon some habit of expectation of the inquisiturus."5 John Dewey defines thinking as “a process of inquiry, of looking into things, of investigating” and a community as a group of like-minded but diverse individuals who come together around a common concern over time.

But whereas Peirce and Dewey originally restricted this phrase to the practitioners of scientific inquiry “all of whom could be considered to form a community in that they were simply dedicated to the use of like procedures in pursuit of identical goals”, this phrase has been broadened. Lipman´s model of inquiry draws more heavily on philosophy, that means he developed the concept of the philosophical community of inquiry. He emphasises more on conceptual exploration and logical inferences and as Dewey also for Lipman the notion community is tied to democracy. „Converting the classroom into a community of inquiry’ in which students listen to one another with respect, build on one another's ideas, challenge one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported opinions, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and seek to identify one another's assumptions.“ 6 Doing philosophy means dialogical as well as communal inquiry. Community of Inquiry was originally a term coined by Charles Sanders Peirce to reference interaction among scientists. It is a group (social setting) of individuals who search out the problematic borders of a puzzling concept through the use of dialogue.To develop a structured dialogue it is important to create an environment in which all participants of the conversation are being treated equally.

John Dewey defines community as a group of like-minded but diverse individuals who come together around a common concern over time7. Community implies, and a democratic society requires, education.

Education is based on inquiry, that means, figuring things out, planning and solving problems that arise from the world around us. We solve these problems together in the places in which these problems arise, namely in communities. One form of these communities are schools.8

4 5 6 7 8

Lipman, Matthew, Sharp, Ann Margaret: Ethical Inquiry: Instructional Manual to accompany Lisa. Montclair, New Jersey, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (with Univ. Press of America), 1998, p. 158.

Peirce, Charles Sanders: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God. (CP 6.468-476).

Lipman, Matthew: Thinking in Education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 20.

Dewey, John: Democracy and Education. (reprinted 1966). New York, Free Press, 1897.

Morehouse, Richard: Cornel West and Prophetic Thought. Reflections on Community within Community of Inquiry. In: Analytic Teaching, 1994, Vol. 15, No. 1, p. 42.

33 Matthew Lipman sees philosophy within the community of inquiry as a Socratic process, entailing all aspects of philosophy. Philosophy not only gives children the opportunity to give meaning to their lives, but also stimulates thinking and encourages cooperative inquiry within a community of inquiry.

For transferring the classroom into a community of inquiry, the traditional role of the teacher must change and a new relationship between teacher and students is necessary. We all have internalized a mental model that gives us the idea that the teacher always is “the one who knows” and that the student is the one who “learns”. So very often teachers focus on hearing the expected answer and they focus on the students` understanding of a particular idea or concept.

The community of inquiry requires teachers that take on the role as facilitators and inquirers, they must have the ability to listen carefully, what children actually say or are trying to say. They must also have the ability to recognize logical patterns of the children’s discourse and hear the philosophical dimension of their concerns. They must be sensitive to the situation as well as to the context, and of course they must like children and establish an environment of trust, so that children can feel save being able to talk about their thoughts and ideas. The teachers must also be open-minded and able to encourage children to think for themselves. They must know how to build a community of inquiry, how to use philosophical tools, questioning techniques and other activities to develop thinking skills. Because of the complexity of the subject “philosophy”, it is strongly recommended that all teachers who want to do Philosophy with Children in their classrooms first participate in a community of inquiry to experience the power of dialogue, inquiry and thoughts and attend accredited training courses.

Doing Philosophy with Children means to listen to children's thoughts and to take them serious, asking questions and leading them on, with the help of particular questions. It also means engaging children in investigation of problems dealing with the role of moral values and norms, for example “How should we treat each other?” (ethical inquiry), engaging children in reflection on the rules of inquiry, for example “What is truth?” (logical inquiry), engaging children in exploring problematic issues that involve the relationships between artistic creation, aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic criticism, for example “What is beauty?” (aesthetic inquiry) and having children seek to answer such questions as “What counts for true?” and “What is knowledge?” (epistemological inquiry). The aim is that pupils in class will become a community of people who inquire cooperatively and think together in a self-reflective and critical manner.

It is a co-operative activity and encourages individuals to speak up and talk about their ideas, think about their own thinking among others, make reasonable judgements, be caring and become autonomous thinkers. Taking current questions and problems as a starting point, the philosophical dialogue starts with concrete experience, it moves from particular to general. On the other hand also the other way around can be demonstrated, the application of the general to the particular.

As teacher “you have to co-ordinate and enhance the performance. You may need to be vigorous at one moment, but restrained at another: You need to make sure that the children are listening to each other, and that everyone has the chance of being heard. You should also try to ensure that important themes are given appropriate treatment; and as the discussion proceeds, you might need help underscore important developments and mark significant junctures. When children make mistakes, you may lead them through their thought again, and when some aspect of discussion is weak, you may introduce exercises to strengthen performance.”9 Community of Inquriy The classroom community of inquiry is characterized by dialogue. In order to follow the inquiry were it leads the participants must reason, they have to get engaged in logical moves. That means for example to explore what has being assumed or taken for granted. “So students learn basic logic, argumentation skills, competency in dialogue and what Harvey Siegel calls ‛the disposition of concern for good reasons’. In addition, the practice of ‛community of inquiry’ implements two features that Willingham observes in the scientific community: making one's thinking accountable to one's peers, and participation in a

9

Cam, Phil: Thinking Together. Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom. Sydney, Australia, Hale & Iremonger/ Primary English Teaching Association 1995, p.41.

34 collaborative community.”10 It often focuses on a specific question or problematic topic. As Splitter and Sharp11 point out it is self-correcting and self-regulating thinking.

Dialogue Through Philosophical Inquiry

Philosophical Tools and Strategies

Community of Inquiry

„Social Setting“ Humans, Groups Building Relations Situation, Topics Resources, Materials

Engaging in Critical, Creative and Caring Thinking

Facilitating, Fostering Skills and Competences

“A philosophical dialogue is more than just talking, it is an activity, a shared inquiry, a way of critical thinking and reflecting together. It helps to develop tools to explore underlying causes, rules and assumptions and can be very creative in finding new ways of solving problems.”12 “To do philosophy” is to try to stimulate the curiosity about the linguistic representation of the idea and the concept, the pleasure of language game, which makes new degrees of freedom in the perception of the world possible. The aim of the philosophical dialogue is not to adjust emotional and affective behaviour, but to support thinking of the reflective kind. The concept of “reflective thinking” was introduced by John Dewey in his book “How We Think” in 1910. It is the “active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends… it is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons.”13 In the philosophical dialogue, where all participants are equal partners, you learn to use thoughts and Interview with Maughn Gregory: Philosophy for Children, by Michael F. Shauhnessy, senior columnist EdNewys.org, published 08/14/2007.

11 Splitter and Sharp: Teaching for Better Thinking. The Classroom Community of Inquiry. The Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd, Melbourne 1995.

12 Camhy, Daniela G./ Untermoser, Melanie: Philosophical Dialogue in Environmental Eduaction. In: Camhy, Daniela G./Born, Rainer: Encouraging Philosophical Thinking. Proceedings of the International Conference on Philosophy for Children. Conceptus –Studien 17, Academia Verlag 2005.

13 Dewey, John: How We Think. New York: D.C. Heath, 1933, p.6.

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35 arguments in a well reflected way, to explain opinions, to construct suppositions, to develop concepts, to discover various possibilities and alternatives, to put questions, to make decisions, to recognise different points of view, to practice logical thinking. This leads to a better understanding of problems, to a better ability of judgement and articulation and after all to more tolerance towards other opinions.14 This kind of dialogue is based originally on the „Meiotic“of Sokrates. Considering the different possibilities of every partner the own ideas and thoughts are given birth with the help of clever questions. In Philosophy for Children it is not the rote learning of factual knowledge but rather, the development of active thought.

The aim is to make children aware of their capacity for discussion and to build upon this capacity. These abilities should help them to deal better with a new situation, to recognise connections, to discover contradictions within the information and to learn to think independently.

Much of the current research and writing has focused on dialogue as well as on community. Very often the term conversation or discussion is used synonymously to dialogue. So it is important to make clear distinctions.

Often when we begin to talk to someone, we start a conversation. It comes very naturally, it might not have a deeper purpose, it might be a spontaneous mode of exchange, participants usually do not think reflectively. It means for example talking to each other for its own sake, to give information, to organize or just simply to talk and share ideas. It is part of everyday live. The roots of the word mean “turn together”. So we listen and take turns in talking to each other. We often listen to conversation and we notice that most people find it very hard to recall, what another person really had said. Focusing on one’s own feelings and thoughts we are only hearing, what fit in our concept. Splitter and Sharp15 suggest “that much of what passes as ordinary conversation reflects either not much thinking at all, or thinking which is ill-formed and inconsequential”.

Sometimes a conversation leads to a discussion16 where we offer our own comments or opinions and we make the effort to make people understand us, usually defending our positions, looking for evidence to be right and to show that others are wrong. So people take positions and bring up arguments and try to defend them. David Bohm sees it similar to a Ping-Pong match, where the aim of the game is to win and defend well. So discussions are conversations, where people defend their opinions and differences, it is a competition of participants and views. It involves stating a position, defending it with counterattacks and seeing who wins.

A dialogue17 is different, it is a way or better a conversation of people thinking and reflecting together, it is a process, where not the own position is the only way and final answer. A dialogue opens up possibilities through our differences and has the intention to reach new understanding. Dialogue is not simply talking or sharing ideas, it is more. To engage in dialogue means thinking and reflecting together, to recognize perspectives put forward by others and to explore new possibilities. It is a complex activity primarily to think together in relationship. That means that you no longer take your own position and thoughts for granted, it implies openness to other’s ideas and to listen to the perspective of others.

According to Buber genuine dialogue occurs only where each of the participants “has in mind the other or the others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relationship between himself and them.”18 A philosophical dialogue is a specific attempt, that Lipman describes as “a dialogue that tries to conform to logic, it moves forward like a boat tacking into the wind, but in the process of its progress comes to resemble that of thinking itself.”19 Camhy, Daniela G./ Untermoser, Melanie: Philosophical Dialogue in Environmental Eduaction. In: Camhy, Daniela G./Born, Rainer: Encouraging Philosophical Thinking. Proceedings of the International Conference on Philosophy for Children. Conceptus –Studien 17, Academia Verlag 2005.

15 Sharp, Ann M., Splitter, Laurance: Teaching for Better Thinking. The Classroom Community of Inquiry. The Australian Council for Educational Tesearch Ltd, Melbourne 1995, p. 48.

16 The roots of the word discussion mean to shake apart.

17 Dialogue come from the Greek words dia and logos. Dia mean “through” and logos translates to “word” and “meaning”.

18 Lipman, Matthew: Thinking in Education. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 19. Adapted from Buber, Martin: Between Man and Man. London, Kegan Paul, 1947.

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This Figure shows some of the differences of Conversation

Discussion

Dialogue

Talking for its own sake - give information organize, share ideas

Offering ones own comments and opinions

Thinking and reflecting together

Focusing on ones own feelings and thoughts

Effort to make people understand

Ones own position is not the only way

Listening and ex-change of ideas

Looking for evidence to be right and to show others are wrong

Not much thinking or thinking which is illformed and inconsequential

Stating a position, defending it and seeing who wins

Building up a community and each person has a special contribution to give Intention to reach a new understanding

Exchange of feelings, thoughts, information

Critiquing the other side’s position

Exploration, investigation, inquiry

Cooperative

Combative

Collaborative

Hearing what fit in our concept

Listening to find flaws and make counterexamples Seeking a conclusion that ratifies our position

Listening to understand

Talking about your ideas

19

Discovering new options and alternatives

Philosophical Dialogue Thinking, reflecting and inquiring (inquiry dialogue) Thinking together implies relax your grip on certainty and listen to the possibilities that result simply from being in a relation-ship with others – possibilities that might not otherwise have occurred.

Thinking together in relationship – “community of inquiry” Intention to arrive at one or more reasonable judgements, regarding the questions or issues that occasioned the dialogue Exploration, investigation, inquiry together to recognizing philosophically problematic aspects Collaborative through philosophical inquiry Listening to understand and to build on each others ideas Philosophical inquiry in form of a community of inquiry employs the following learning strategies: 1.emphasis on reflection and metacognition 2. development of respect for others’ ideas 3. reasonable judgements

Lipman, Matthew: Thinking in Education. Cambridge University Press. New York 1991.p.16.

37 Philosophical dialogue in school involves understanding, human action, empathy and trust. A Philosophy with Children community provides an ideal framework for working out intersubjective perceptions and understanding of complex cultural differences.

Philosophizing with Children seems to foster skills and abilities, which are indispensable for regaining our future according to “Sustainable Development”. These are cognitive as well as creative and social skills: recognizing future as a task of joint action, analysing our perception of reality and our own way of life critically, normative thinking and reasoning, recognizing paradigm and capability to consider alternatives, holistic thinking and capability to participate in a dialogue.

Philosophizing can develop as a new cultural technique to an education strategy, that enables youngsters to an active participation in the process of shaping the future through dialogue capable to take over responsibility.

Already in elementary school the starting point for philosophizing consists in the subjective ideas, experiences and explanations which children bring to class with them. Pupils and teachers approach the problems with questions. That is to say, subjective knowledge, values, goals and consequences are brought up and considered and discussed together. Thoughts are developed jointly, and children discover how thought can play about its subject matter and how reasoning about issues of importance can be satisfying.

Philosophy answers the new challenge of the ever-changing world by searching for intercultural understanding in a globalized world. There can be no doubt that philosophy can promote intercultural thinking, decision-making and action taking, but more effort is necessary to implement this philosophical capability in children’s learning and living environment in the medium term.

This implementation in children’s environment is more likely to succeed if one is aware of the networklike nature of philosophy with children: Doing Philosophy with Children is a holistic dynamic approach, which promotes personal integration of human existence through cognitive, emotional and social communication. It is one way that the next generation will be prepared socially and cognitively to engage in the necessary dialogue, judging and questioning what is vital to existence for a society in a globalized world.

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Wisdom and Other Aims for Pre-College Philosophy Education

by Maughn Rollins Gregory

The Need to Develop Objectives for Pre-College Philosophy Education 2009 marks the fortieth anniversary of Matthew Lipman’s first philosophical novel for children, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery,i which was piloted in schools in Montclair and Newark, New Jersey.

Today Harry has been translated into scores of languages and dialects and Philosophy for Children has become a world-wide movement. However, the diversity of curriculum materials and pedagogical protocols this movement has spawned signifies not merely different approaches to, but different conceptions of what it means to teach philosophy to children or to engage children in philosophical practices. Other disciplines that have become a regular part of children’s education – like mathematics, science and history – have developed educational objectives and standards that describe the knowledge and skills children should be able to demonstrate at various stages in their education. These objectives make it possible to judge the merits of varying educational approaches, to make formative and summative program assessments, and to regulate the consistency and equity of educational experiences across diverse populations. Also, the formulation of educational objectives and standards occasions professional dialogue about what it means to practice a discipline well and about likely means to initiate newcomers into the discipline – dialogue that benefits the discipline itself.

All of this is instructive for precollege philosophy, and in particular for Philosophy for Children, which aspires to make philosophy a standard school subject for all age groups (see Cam, 2006; Splitter and Sharp, 1995). Though philosophy is a relative newcomer to pre-college and especially to pre-secondary education, the proliferation of materials and methods in the last few decades has resulted in four important problems for this field that can only be solved by giving attention to the issue of objectives and standards for meeting them. First, approaches to teaching philosophy to children and youth are so diverse that it is difficult to compare their relative merits.

There has been confusion and unfairness in comparing and criticizing programs with widely different objectives. The confusion increases when philosophers argue, correctly, that school programs in critical thinking, ethics, art, democratic citizenship, and character education have, or ought to have, philosophical components.

Second, pre-college philosophy programs are rarely evaluated, even regarding their own objectives; or else they are evaluated for external objectives like raising grades or test scores.

Most of the empirical evaluation of Philosophy for Children has been with regard to its effect on children’s thinking skills (Garcia-Moriyón, Rebollo and Colom, 2004), which is only one of the program’s objectives, with the result that the program is often misconstrued (e.g., Willingham, 2007) as a non-disciplinary thinking curriculum, rather than an introduction to the discipline of philosophy. The lack of authentic program evaluation is a problem for pre-college philosophy because without it, neither program developers nor their clients have evidence of the programs’ effectiveness for either internal or external objectives (see Reznitskaya, 2005).

Two obstacles to authentic evaluation of pre-college philosophy education are, first, that philosophers are not trained in methods of empirical research and so must cross disciplinary boundaries to collaborate with colleagues in the social sciences, who themselves may not be interested in philosophy; and second, that authentic objectives of philosophy education – like

39 dialogical competence and acumen with philosophical concepts – have been difficult to observe and measure empirically until relatively recently. Most evaluative studies of pre-college philosophy education (e.g., Dolz, 1996; Morehouse & Williams, 1998; Shipman, 1983) have relied on measurement tools such as standardized vocabulary, reading comprehension, and logic tests that capture only a small range of the outcomes important to philosophy education. However, recent advances in qualitative and quantitative research methods in education, influenced primarily by socio-cultural learning theories (see Reznitskaya 2000), make this work increasingly suitable for the evaluation of philosophy education – particularly of classroom dialogue (e.g., Alexander, 2003; Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999; Kuhn, Shaw, Felton, 1997; Nystrand, Wu, Garmon, Zeiser, & Long, 2003).

The lack of institutional and professional rapprochement between philosophers and educational researchers also contributes to a third problem facing the field of pre-college philosophy: that many programs are uninformed by research literature in educational sciences – including pedagogy, educational psychology or even cognitive science – in the way that programs in other subjects are, with the result that philosophy programs may not be developmentally appropriate or pedagogically sound. Philosophy has an important role to play in critiquing educational aims, concepts and methods, but also has much to learn from educational research, particularly when it comes to developing curriculum for philosophy education.

A fourth problem is a lack of collaboration or even communication among philosophy education program developers, with the result that new programs often do not build on the successes or deliberately avoid the mistakes of past programs. Over the past four decades a body of philosophical and empirical research on philosophy for, of and with children and adolescents has built up, amounting to thousands of academic books, articles, and doctoral dissertations, from scores of countries. Pre-college philosophy is the topic of dozens of academic conferences or special conference sessions every year, in every part of the world, and is the primary thematic focus of four academic journals,ii as well as a frequent focus of numerous other journals in philosophy and education.iii The problem is not merely that many programs touted as new or unique are actually neither, but more importantly, that they are uninformed by the past 40 years of scholarship. Today it is simply un-creditable for developers of pre-college philosophy programs to claim ignorance of this field of scholarship; and to create new materials or methods for use in schools – let alone for sale to them – without consulting this scholarship, is not merely unprofessional but unethical.

The articulation of objectives and standards for pre-college philosophy education would help to solve or alleviate these problems. Of course, professional and educational standards can be misused and can have unintended negative consequences – one of which, for pre-college philosophy education, could be the insulation of a majority opinion on aims and methods from minority criticism and innovation. More serious negative consequences could be the fragmentation of teaching and learning in pre-college philosophy into discreet, measurable outcomes and the valuing (i.e. assessment) of pre-determined, narrowly-defined performance objectives over the experience and process of philosophical inquiry itself (see Hyland, 1994, 54) and the unexpected but educationally-significant outcomes that might emerge from that process (Osberg and Biesta, 2008). As Kotnik argues (2008, 8), this consequence would be particularly damning to Philosophy for Children, for which the educational benefit of philosophical inquiry depends on its being a holistically meaningful experience for children.

Setting standards also raises the perennial danger of determining program objectives on the basis of what can be readily assessed, instead of determining what and how to assess on the basis of authentic program objectives. Moreover, in spite of the tremendous amount of work done in the past forty years, pre-college philosophy is still an experimental field, in that there is no

40 meaningful consensus as to the proper aims of pre-college philosophy education, and few of the aims that have been advanced have been studied empirically with regard to the kinds of materials and methods likely to achieve them. For these reasons, rather than attempt to promulgate standards with any official status, the work that needs to be done at this time by practitioners and theorists working in pre-college philosophy is: To articulate authentic purposes, objectives and standards for their programs; To defend these with value-oriented arguments and with arguments and evidence from relevant philosophical and educational research, To formulate research-based guidelines for educational materials, methods and professional development likely to achieve their stated objectives, and To find ways to gather evidence of whether or not those objectives are achieved.

This kind of work has been going on in the past four decades (e.g. Lipman, Sharp and Oscanyan, 1980, Section II), but not to the extent or systematically enough to alleviate the problems or bring the benefits described above.

Some Common Objectives for Pre-College Philosophy A review of Philosophy for Children and other pre-college and undergraduate philosophy programs and the academic literature examining them reveals four kinds of objectives commonly stated or implied for these programs: 1. To help students acquire cognitive skills and dispositions, including: learning to make sound inferences and other reasoning moves (Cannon and Weinstein, 1985; Gratton, 2000; Weinstein, 1988), learning to construct and critique logical arguments (Imbrosciano, 1993; Slade, 1989; Splitter, 1988), and learning to evaluate evidence.

2. To help students learn the concept of philosophical inquiry as the disciplined, open-ended, self-corrective search for reasonable beliefs and values (Dewey, 1933, 1997; Fisher, 2008b; Lipman, 1991; Splitter and Sharp, 1995; Walton, 1998), and learn inquiry strategies such as identifying problems, formulating inquiry questions, constructing and testing original hypotheses, constructing and critiquing arguments, finding and analyzing relevant data, and drawing reasonable conclusions (Dalin, 1983; Haynes and Haynes, 2000; Matsuoka, 2004).

3. To help students learn the concept of dialogue as a method of collaborative inquiry and peer accountability (Fisher, 2008a; Gregory, 2008; Kennedy, 2004; Sternberg, 1999), and learn to dialogue with cognitive and social competence (Splitter and Sharp, 1995).

4. To help students learn canonical philosophical content, including questions, problems, concepts, arguments, and some of the key figures within the sub-disciplines of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, political philosophy and logic (Lim, 2003; van der Leeuw and Mostert, 1987), and learn to discern philosophical concepts and issues wherever they arise – sometimes referred to as developing “a philosophical ear� (Gregory, 2008, 1).

In addition to alleviating the problems mentioned above, the establishment of these kinds of objectives for pre-college philosophy education could bring the additional benefit of a wider appreciation among educators and parents of the educational merits of studying philosophy, especially the cultivation of cross-disciplinary habits of rigorous intellectual engagement and a nuanced understanding of philosophical concepts like justice, person, mind, beauty, cause, number, truth, citizen, good and right, that are foundational to the arts and sciences. The

41 recognition that these merits come, not from merely studying philosophy as a high school elective, but from “growing up with philosophy” (Lipman and Sharp, 1978) would no doubt benefit the profession with more philosophy college majors.

However, to work for the wider inclusion of philosophy in pre-college education on the basis of its intellectual and academic merits alone is to risk allowing pre-college philosophy to be co-opted in the enterprise of education for socio-economic advancement – an enterprise severely criticized by philosophers since ancient times: Sophists had claimed to train young people for political life, but Plato wanted to accomplish this by providing them with a knowledge … inseparable from the love of the good and from the inner transformation of the person. Plato wanted to train not only skillful statesmen, but also human beings. (Hadot, 2002, 59.)

The timeless distinction Plato drew was between education that aims at “getting ahead” and education that aims at “living well,” or wisdom. Getting ahead means acquiring the disciplinary knowledge and the intellectual, social and technological skills necessary for academic and professional advancement. Living well means learning to cultivate personal and collective wellbeing, which involves regulating one’s desire and action in ways that bring meaning and purpose to one’s life. Of course, making a living is part of living well, and being wise does not preclude being successful, but education that focuses exclusively on getting ahead prepares students, ultimately, to be successful at pursuing unexamined desires in a free-market economy.

Indeed, as Sternberg observes, this is the intended aim for many parents and educators: Education is seen more as an access route … toward obtaining … the best possible credentials for individual socioeconomic advancement. Education is seen not so much as a means of helping society but of helping one obtain the best that society has to offer socially, economically, and culturally. (Sternberg, 1999, 62.)

It is ironic that this distinction between getting ahead and living well applies to teaching philosophy, which originated as the disciplined pursuit of wisdom. But pre-college philosophy has often been used for getting ahead, especially in its instrumental role of teaching for excellent thinking, which has been justified in the following terms: To help children do better in school, by helping them to make more sense of subject content, to develop cross-curricular skills (Haynes, 2002, 127-9) and to think in ways characteristic of particular disciplines (Lipman, 1991, 18), and by offering them more “intellectually stimulating” experiences that will increase their motivation (Fisher, 2008b, xi and 2-3).

To prepare students to do well in college and to perform better on college entrance exams (Willingham, 2007, 8).

To prepare students to be successful in business (Willingham, 2007, 8) and other sectors of employment, particularly given the rapid “rate of change within society” (Fisher, 2008b, 3).

To prepare students to participate in democratic decision-making (Lipman, 1998) and thereby strengthen democratic society, characterized as a “thinking society,” (Fisher, 2008b, 3).

These largely instrumentalist aims contrast dramatically with the following, also stated for teaching thinking, but focused on improving the quality of children’s lives more directly: To allow students to experience the enjoyment of intellectual challenge (Fisher, 2008b, 1 and 3).

To give students cognitive tools and dispositions to solve current life problems and to achieve personal autonomy by avoiding manipulation (Murris, 2008; Splitter, 86).

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To helping students learn to make better moral, aesthetic and other kinds of judgments that will enhance their life experiences (Lipman, 1991, 19).

The former set of aims for teaching thinking are largely compatible with the latter, but the latter cannot be realized by education that focuses exclusively on the former. Nor will educational aims for living well be realized if they are merely added onto to the standard curriculum for getting ahead, or even if some kind of balance is attempted between the two sets of aims. Rather, as a growing number of educational philosophers and psychologists are proposing (Gregory and Laverty, 2009; Noddings, 2005; Sternberg, 2003), living well must become the primary educational aim, to which other aims should be expected to contribute.

Wisdom Objectives for Pre-College Philosophy In contradiction to philosophers for whom “to apply philosophy is not thereby to do it” (Pollack, 2007, 246), a number of philosophers have argued the reverse: that philosophy is most authentic as a way of life: [P]hilosophy is love of wisdom; wisdom being not knowledge but knowledge-plus; knowledge turned to account in the instruction and guidance it may convey in piloting life through the storms and the shoals that beset life-experience as well as into such havens of consummatory experience as enrich our human life from time to time. (Dewey, 2008, 389.)

[T]he philosophical search for truth is a meditative way of living out the answers it finds and the questions it asks such that they are felt, understood, and incorporated in growing wisdom; it is a gradual, not only theoretical but also emotional and practical transformation of the philosopher. (Peperzak, 1999, 124.)

[T]here is no essential opposition compelling us to choose between philosophy as theory and as artful life-practice. Indeed, we must not choose between them…. [W]e surely should build our art of living on our knowledge and vision of the world, and reciprocally seek the knowledge that serves our art of living. Philosophy is strongest when both its modes of practice are combined to reinforce each other as they did in ancient philosophy.

(Shusterman, 1997, 4.)

The Stoics distinguished three inter-related components of living wisely: a moral component of living ethically, virtuously and with integrity; a psychological component of maintaining tranquility in the midst of chaos and tribulation; and an intellectual component of disciplined thinking and the construction of a value-oriented understanding of the world and one’s place in it.iv The Stoics correlated these three components of wellbeing with the disciplines of ethics (behavior), physics (perspective) and logic (thinking), respectively, and emphasized that each discipline involved both a theoretical and an applied or lived component (Hadot, 1995, i24). This tradition provides us with categories of wisdom-oriented objectives for philosophy education, including pre-college philosophy. Here are some objectives that might be included in those categories: 1(a) Theoretical Ethics To help students develop skills of interpersonal communication, and to provide opportunities for them to develop empathy by learning about the values and interests of others and about their complex relationships to their social and natural environments (Schertz, 2006; Sharp, 1993; Sharp, 2006).

43

1(b)

2(a)

2(b)

3(a)

To familiarize students with relevant ideas, personalities and episodes from the history of philosophy, in age-appropriate manner, as options for living well (Sharp, 2008, 9).

To familiarize students with alternate ethical theories.

To help students understand the procedures and develop the skills of collaborative inquiry to resolve social conflict (Gregory, 2004; Gregory, 2005b).

To provide students opportunities to reflect philosophically on the rewards and responsibilities of many kinds of interpersonal relationships and of community membership.

To provide students opportunities to reflect philosophically on a variety of paradigms of human physical and mental health, as options for living well (Gregory, 2005a).

Lived Ethics To help students wake up to the ethical dimension of their experiences – to recognize when issues of right and wrong, good and evil, duty, justice and compassion arise in their experience – and to conduct ethical inquiry toward making sound ethical judgments in the course of their everyday lives. (Lipman, 1987; Sharp, 1987b; Sprod, 2001) To encourage students to cultivate particular, self-chosen habits of moral feeling and action such as curbing appetites and egocentric passions, maintaining physical and mental health, and exercising compassion and concern for social justice – all as episodes of meaningful experience.

Theoretical Physics To help students understand the relationship between suffering and egotism,v and to familiarize them with the teachings of philosophers, sages, prophets and playwrights from a variety of traditions on this point, including, e.g. Socrates, Samkya, Confucius, the Buddha, Jeremiah, Jesus, Mohammad, Epicurus, Marcus Arelius, and Aeschylus.

The most important lessons to be learned from this literature are: o That much of our suffering can be alleviated by reducing our own egotism and by cultivating habits of mindfulness, gratitude and appreciation of simple pleasures. o That much of human suffering is inescapable, but is better met with tranquility than with hubris, denial or escapism. o That suffering should be the occasion for cultivating human empathy and solidarity.

Lived Physics To provide students the opportunity to reflect on their emotional lives and to practice emotional self-regulation (Gazzard, 2000; Lipman, 1995).

To provide students the opportunity to reflect philosophically on their own experiences of discontent, unrequited desire, fear, humiliation, aversion, anxiety, and other forms of suffering, and on their experiences of tranquility, gratitude, empathy, reverence and awe, in the attempt to discern ways in which they contribute to their own suffering and contentment.

To provide students opportunities to experiment with contemplative practices such as communal ritual (Sharp, 2007), empathic awareness (Sharp, 2006), aesthetic appreciation, present-moment mindfulness (Hadot, 1995, 84-5), contemplation of nature (Hadot, 1995, 97), yoga (Armstrong, 2006, 195-7) and other practices recommended in wisdom traditions for the cultivation of equanimity and autonomy.

Theoretical Logic To help students acquire the cognitive skills and dispositions described above.

To help students master the inquiry strategies and learn the concept of robust philosophical inquiry described above.

To help students learn the theory of collaborative inquiry and the dialogical competencies described above.

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To help students construct stable but fallible, value-oriented worldviews that help them to understand the meaning and purpose of their lives, that will both inform and be informed by their experiences.

3(b) Lived Logic To provide students the opportunity to experience the enjoyment of intellectual challenge.

To help students learn to use their thinking and inquiry skills to solve problems that arise in their own (non-academic) experience.

To help students to develop a “critical spirit” (Oxman-Michelli, 1992), to learn to avoid manipulation and otherwise to achieve personal autonomy.vi To help students discipline their “inner dialogue” (Hadot, 1995, 102), to acquire the disposition to engage in ongoing self-examination and self-correction of their beliefs and values (Sharp, 1987a), and otherwise to become “more thoughtful, more reflective, more considerate, more reliable …” (Lipman, Sharp and Oscanyan, 1984) – in short, more reasonable people (Lipman, 1993).

The call for contemporary education to adopt wisdom-oriented objectives is an important opportunity for philosophers to become as involved in educational policy and practice as they were at the height of the critical thinking movement in education. But in this instance, philosophy has as much to gain as it has to offer. As Cam observes: Unlike many other academic disciplines, philosophers have never thought about how they might reconstruct their discipline for general educational purposes until quite recently; and being effectively cut off from any concern with school education or education beyond the university, philosophical practice has tended to be narrowly academic and insular. (Cam, 2006, 37.)

Many philosophers working in Philosophy for Children have argued that the work of reconstructing the discipline of philosophy in the context of pre-college education should be the occasion for a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy (Cannon, 2002; Kennedy, 1999). I suggest that in particular, reinstating philosophy’s wisdom-oriented objectives in precollege education could help return philosophy to its original identity as the disciplined study and practice of living well.

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End Notes

See “IAPC Timeline” at http://cehs.montclair.edu/academic/iapc/timeline.shtml, accessed 10/22/08.

Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children (Montclair, New Jersey: IAPC, 1979 to present), Analytic Teaching: The Community of Inquiry Journal (LaCrosse, Wisconsin: Viterbo University, 1981 to present, online at www.viterbo.edu/analytic), Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy for Children, renamed Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy in Education (Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations, 1993 to present), and Childhood & Philosophy: A Journal of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (2005 to present, online at www.filoeduc.org/childphilo). iii Only a minority of this work has any direct or substantive connection to the IAPC. iv Hadot summarizes these components as “a complete transformation of his representations of the world, his inner climate, and his outer behavior.” 1995, 85-6. “What is needed is the immediate transformation of our way of thinking, of acting, and of accepting events. We must think in accordance with truth, act in accordance with justice, and lovingly accept what comes to pass.” Ibid., 229. v As Hadot explains: “In the view of all philosophical schools, mankind’s principal cause of suffering, disorder, and unconsciousness were the passions: that is, unregulated desires and exaggerated fears. People are prevented from truly living, it was taught, because they are dominated by worries. Philosophy thus appears, in the first place, as a therapeutic of the passions ….” Hadot, P.: 1995, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault.

Trans. M. Chase. (A. I. Davidson, ed.) Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA., 83. vi Thus, Hadot asserts: “On this level, we are no longer concerned with theoretical logic – that is, the theory of correct reasoning – rather, we are concerned not to let ourselves be deceived in our everyday lives by false representations.” Ibid., 192. i

ii