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.


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