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2nd Interview with
Ann Margaret Sharp
By Saeed Naji
1. What is the Essential Difference between Philosophy for Children and Philosophy with Children?
Philosophy for Children and Philosophy with Children have a lot in common:
First, both see the doing of philosophy in a communal atmosphere as essential.
Secondly, Teachers have a responsibility to be pedagogically strong and philosophical self-effacing. What I mean by that is that their role is to model the inquiry procedure sufficiently till the children have internalized the procedure and can proceed by themselves. By philosophically self-effacing, I mean it is not the role of the facilitator to be giving answers to the philosophical questions that are raised by the group. If asked for his opinion, he should not give it until the children have been successful in mastering the procedures of philosophical inquiry and will treat the teacher’s view as one more view to be taken into consideration.
Thirdly, both see the moral dimension of the communal inquiry procedures as important. (Respect for persons, learning how to listen to views very different from one’s own, allowing oneself to enter imaginatively into different world views, so that one can understand the issue from the perspective of a world view very different than one’s own, refraining from calling names, accepting of counter-examples, willingness to give reasons for one’s views, willingness to self correct, willing to build on the ideas of others, willingness to put one’s ego in perspective as the inquiry proceeds, etc.)
Fourthly, Both are aware of the political dimension of communal inquiry with its commitment to reasonableness, fallibilism, self-correction and democratic procedures of dialogue and inquiry.
But there are differences. Philosophy for Children is committed to the reconstruction of the History of Philosophy by means of stories and manuals- so that children are exposed to the ideas of a variety of philosophers on issues that they have agreed to inquire about. Most often these various views are presented as the ideas of different children in the stories, or as options to be considered in exercises and discussion plans in the manuals.
Thus, for Philosophy for Children, the sequenced and structured curriculum is very important for pedagogical reasons. The stories are sequenced as to afford children growing consciousness in the procedures of philosophical inquiry, while at the same time presenting them with the ever-recurring, ageless philosophical themes that are part and parcel of human experience (e.g. fairness, friendship, love, self, rights, beauty and goodness.)
The manuals aim to refine the children’s ability to do philosophy with one another (e.g. make better distinctions, inferences and judgments, give better reasons for one’s own point of view, offer plausible counter-examples, suggest alternative points of view, imagine better ways of organizing institutions, etc. etc.) while at the same time expose them to the myriad of ideas that Western philosophers have offered us. This refinement and exposure is accomplished by means of exercises in which one practices the various skills of doing philosophy and discussion plans that offer various philosophical views to consider before making a judgment.
If there is any criticism I have of the existing Philosophy for Children curriculum it is that it does not pay sufficient attention to the various philosophical positions of the Eastern and Near Eastern philosophers – but hopefully this will be corrected in the very near future as more philosophers from these areas begin to develop their own curriculums.
It is my understanding that Philosophy with Children is not committed to the use of a structured and sequenced curriculum which is aimed at the reconstruction of the History of Philosophy and to the detailed practicing and refining of philosophical skills in a manner that is accessible to young children, while at the same time providing for the social, emotional, moral and political education of the children.
2. The new paradigm of education called for by philosophy for children appears to be resisted by school administrators. Why?
In the last chapter of Harry Stottlemier’s Discovery Lisa talks about a poem that her father read to her called Mind. Unfortunately she only remembers the first and last lines. “Mind it is purest play is like some bat that beats about in caverns all alone. “And that in the happiest intellection a graceful error may correct the cave.”
Earlier in the story, Jill had said that her thoughts were like bats, flying around inside a dark cave. The poet here similarly thinks of our ideas as bounded by the walls of our understanding. It sometimes happens that someone makes a mistake and in the process changes the boundary lines. To an older generation, what was done was an error, but as it turned out, it opened new vistas of understanding and later generations look back on the idea as a stroke of genius. This is the way it frequently is with explorers and discoverers. In their own day, they are considered simply wrong, but their discoveries cause a considerable reorganization of human knowledge, and it is in the light of the more comprehensive understanding that such discoverers are later considered right. The example given by Lisa is Columbus. To the people of his day, he was a fool, but once his point of view was understood, the rest of the world came around and began to share his way of looking at things.
The move from one paradigm of understanding to another happens rarely, but when it does, it is as if all our knowledge has to be rethought in light of the new paradigm
Philosophy for Children could well be one of those “graceful errors that correct that cave.” If its assumptions about the nature of education are correct, assumptions such as:
l. Education should be primarily concerned with higher order thinking
2. Classrooms should be converted into communities of inquiry
3. All disciplines should be taught in an inquiry way.
4. The underlying assumptions of each discipline should be brought to the attention of children and they should be encouraged to inquire about these assumptions
5. Children should be encouraged to inquire about the philosophical dimension of their daily experience once they acquire language
6. Teachers should be thought of as facilitators who enable children to inquire into problematic situations rather than as founts of knowledge.
7. A commitment to fallibilism and self- correction on the part of teachers and students is an essential component of learning how to think well and to think for oneself.
8. Education is primarily about helping children to make better judgments
9. it follows that all the components of traditional education need to be rethought, including the curriculum, the role of the teacher, the purpose of grading, individual vs social inquiry, competitive activities in the school, the architecture of schools and classrooms and the aims of education itself.
This can be quite upsetting for those who thought they understood the nature of education as the accumulation of knowledge. The new paradigm of education questions all the aims, objectives and practices of traditional education and calls for a new understanding of what education is all about.
Such change involves the reform of teacher education, the rethinking of school buildings, the restructuring of the curriculum, the rethinking of the role of the teacher in the classroom community of inquiry, and a rethinking of the role of administrators in schools committed to on-going inquiry, critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking and inquiry. This kind of change can be not only quite expensive but also quite frightening and threatening to those who are committed to maintaining the status quo.
Nothing is as hard for a human being as moving from one paradigm to another because it requires that she rethink everything – reconstruct everything she thought she knew – and begin again to try to make sense of things in a whole new world of understanding. Being the creatures of habit that we are, we are bound to resist, and yet the progress of humanity is dependent on the more comprehensive understanding of the new paradigm and the willingness to change. Ultimately to refuse to change is to be left alone in the “dark ages.”
3. Is it possible to do philosophy with school children without using a philosophy curriculum especially designed for this purpose?
The curriculum developed by the IAPC constitutes a genuine philosophical curriculum in two senses:
l. First, the philosophical content is part of the content of philosophy as it has evolved in the West for the past 2500 years. The concepts, procedures and questions that fill the novels and manuals are borrowed from a long History of Philosophy beginning with the pre-Socratics.
2. Each program in the curriculum (novel plus manual) has a structure comprising of a range of concepts and procedures, so that children, who work through the materials, taken separately and also in sequence, see themselves moving from one point to another. This is not surprising given that each story is constructed around a spine of philosophical concepts and strategies designed to reflect, on the one hand, aspects of the tradition of philosophy, and on the other, the kinds of ideas and thinking skills which are welcomed by children who reflect on their own experiences.
However, if philosophy is to become an integrated and accepted component of the school curriculum, I do acknowledge that there is a need to develop a broad range of classroom materials. Some of these might not pass the test of time. Others have and will become the subject of debate as to their philosophical and or pedagogical worth. No doubt, the original IAPC curriculum will need to be updated and expanded to take into account Eastern philosophy and additional sub branches of philosophy (e.g. philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, etc.)
Thus it is only through the gradual creation of a broad corpus of philosophical materials rendered appropriate for classroom use and reflecting more and more of the heritage that is handed down from generation to generation, that we will begin to see philosophy in schools taken seriously.
At present, philosophers and teachers in many countries are constructing, publishing and piloting philosophical stories for children, ranging from a few pages to full length novels and accompanied by manual-style resource books for teachers and children, which focus on identifying and exploring key philosophical concepts and providing philosophical exercises and discussion plans that will motivate philosophical inquiry in the classroom. These stories cover a wide range of themes and age groups and are often the result of collaboration that includes the children themselves.
There are others who think that philosophy can be taught using standard literature. Although certainly possible when taught by a professional philosopher, I think that there are certain things we should consider when using such literature in the classroom.
Even though some might think that approaching philosophical issues through picture books and novels is easier than working from a pedagogically designed philosophy curriculum, I suspect that it is more likely to the very difficult for the classroom teacher. In most countries, teachers are not trained in the art and craft of philosophical inquiry. To explore the philosophical dimensions of literature – and to prepare children to do the same – requires an expertise that cannot be taken for granted, especially given the complexity of a good piece of literature. Since analyses of plot and character development are crucial goals in a literature class, what one looks for in philosophy is a way into the thinking strategies and ideas that lie beneath the surface of the story. The philosophical story-as-text provides a direct passage for the child and teacher to these procedures and ideas, though it does not, of course, guarantee that the task of actually doing philosophy will be accomplished in the classroom well. Whether the children end up doing philosophy depends a great deal on the ability of teachers and how well they have been prepared.
Standard literature does not set out to provide readers with the reasoning skills, concept formation skills and inquiry skills necessary to do philosophy well. Analysis of concepts, open ended questioning and dialogue, generating speculative and creative hypotheses about the nature of things, identifying the structure of arguments and fallacies of reasoning, or weaving in a reflective and self correcting manner the procedures of inquiry into the primary subject is usually not its concern. These procedures often become the focus of attention in a philosophical discussion, and it cannot be taken for granted that teachers and students will simply pick them up in the course of analyzing a literary work. Even the recognition of a particular concept as controversial, and thus ripe for inquiry, is something that has to be learned through determined practice.
The stories in Philosophy for Children function as appropriate springboards to inquiry because
(l) They expose ordinary emotions and feelings of children to scrutiny without putting real children and their problems under the spotlight.
2. They provide an immediacy that helps the child connect the philosophical concepts and practice with their own daily experience.
3. They model philosophical practice as a communal dialogical process which can be practiced by ordinary children and
4. They present philosophical concepts, procedures and situations in real-life contexts which are readily transferable and
5. They provide a common focus for inquiry, dialogue and meaning making.
6. They provided a means of binding the community in solidarity as they collaboratively struggle with their own inquiry.
7. Philosophical stories provide endless opportunities to engage in moral imagination, necessary for augmenting the critical deliberation for good judgment. Principles alone cannot give us what we need for wise decision-making. The philosophical story gives the children a particular context with particular characters in particular situations, which necessitates the children’s coming to attend to this particularity when discussing the questions raised by the text. Thus, philosophical stories, if they are any good, model the complexity of life. The children in the community take account of this complexity. They find themselves engaging in a vicarious experience, dealing with these complexities as best they can in coming to some judgment.
Iris Murdoch asserts that it is this common text that is crucial to the concept formation work that is to be done by the group, as well as to understanding of what each other say and why they say it. This understanding involves a slow progressive ability to enter into the worldview of others. Without a common text for focus, communication may break down and the same words may occasion different results in different hearers. Human beings can become obscure to each other in certain respects, unless there are mutual objects of attention that call for dialogue and systematic inquiry. Being able to return to the text when confusion reigns is, from a pedagogical point of view, most important.
And what of those who think that you do not have to use any curriculum at all to teach philosophy – that one can rely on discussion of children’s experience to provide enough context to motivate a good philosophical discussion? Again, this might be so, if the discussion is being facilitated by a professional philosopher who (a) knows the history of philosophy well (b) can hear the philosophical dimension in what children say (c) knows how to model the philosophical procedures and skills that are necessary to do philosophy well, (d) can invent discussion plans on her feet as the conversation proceeds so as to delve deeper into the philosophical dimension and (e) knows how to involve a classroom discussion in a philosophical dialogue that focuses on philosophical issues.
.
The problem is that most classroom teachers are not prepared to do this. They need help from a sequenced curriculum that highlights the important concepts and provides exercises and discussion plans that help children to perfect their reasoning skills while at the same time encouraging them to explore philosophical concepts and their meaning as they effect their daily behavior.
But if one is interested in bringing philosophy to the elementary school curriculum, one cannot rely solely on professional philosophers to make philosophy happen in the classroom. Teachers must be prepared to teach philosophy and teachers need a curriculum.
If philosophy is to enter the curriculum it has to be much more than a mere time slot for teachers and children to do philosophy in an ad hoc and unstructured manner with a professional philosopher. There may well be much to criticize in the teaching of disciplines such as history, science and mathematics. But few would seriously suggest that a curriculum in one of these subjects would consist of a random collection of stories or an ad hoc discussion about the mathematic, scientific or historical dimension of some common experience of some of the children in the room.
Serious philosophical inquiry involves the study of a structured philosophy curriculum. Of course, it doesn’t have to be the IAPC curriculum, but that particular curriculum can serve as an exemplar of what such a curriculum would look like. Of course teachers should encourage their students to read, think and talk philosophically across a broad range of contexts and materials. But such encouragement is more likely to bear fruit when these same students are given the opportunity to engage philosophy as a discipline and a curriculum. We must face the reality that if we want to bring a sense of structure, continuity, comprehensiveness and even profundity to philosophy in the classroom, finding a collection of philosophical themes and concepts within the pages of a picture book or novel or an isolated experience of some children is not likely to do the job.
Thus, in practical terms, I would recommend the following: proceed by way of a structured and expanding philosophy curriculum to a broader range of stimulus materials and resources. To an extent, this recommendation reflects current practice, for many people in different pars of the world are engaged in trialing both purpose-written materials and standard literature, in a cooperative effort to bring philosophy into the mainstream curriculum.
4. Why do you make the assumption that waiting till someone is University age is too late to improve young people’s thinking?
I wonder what would happen if we waited till a child went to university to teach her mathematics, or scientific inquiry or history or how to read or write? One might question why one would do such a thing, if the child were more than able to start learning these disciplines throughout the formative years of her life. Why then do we think that the practice of philosophy should be postponed until one has finished adolescence?
The older we are, the more socialized we become. Philosophy involves the acquisition of many dispositions that are in conflict with the socialization process, dispositions to question, to be critical, to look for assumptions, to analyze the inherent meanings of practices, especially their ethical consequences, to consider alternative ways of looking at things and to self-correct.
To introduce philosophy to university age students often involves as much unlearning as learning.
Young children do not have this problem. Once they acquire language, they are naturally social, wondering, curious persons who are motivated to make sense of their world. Since they know little, they are open to a variety of alternative ways of looking at things and they often are willing to self correct much easier than young adults who are so convinced that they know so many things.
Lipman says in Thinking in Education that to withhold from children access to philosophical ideas, and procedures, reasoning skills and criteria for good judgment and yet to expect them to judge well is like withholding air from them and expecting them not to suffocate. And how else are we to make these intellectual tools available to children if not through a series of courses in philosophy, redesigned so as to be accessible to children? If they are afforded no opportunity to compare and contrast the reasons people have for calling things true and good, how can they be expected to know what they are talking about when they are asked to decide which statements are true and which are not or which things are good and which are not?
Many years ago, Margaret Donaldson in her Children’s Minds produced evidence that Piaget’s assumption that children need be about l2 or l3 before they can engage in formal operations and inquire about abstract concepts was incorrect. Children are as able to practice thinking and reasoning skills with their peers as well as they are able to do mathematics or science, read and write.
There is at present a widespread recognition in education that something is amiss, but efforts at improvement often turn out to be merely cosmetic. There is nothing wrong with attempting to infuse critical thinking into the teaching of the disciplines. But these efforts at infusion are bound to be fumbling, haphazard and unavailing as long as children are not permitted to examine directly and for themselves the standards, criteria, concepts and values that are needed to evaluate whatever it is they are talking and thinking about. Merely to encourage differences of opinion, open discussion and debate will not provide a comfortable escalator to the improvement of thinking. This will happen only if students are given access to the tools of inquiry, the methods and principles of reasoning, practice in concept analysis, experience in critical reading and writing, opportunities for creative description and narration as well as in the formulation of arguments and explanations and a community setting in which ideas and intellectual contexts can be fluently and openly exchanged. These are the educational conditions that provide an infrastructure upon which a sound superstructure of good judgment can be erected.
Those who are willing to devote themselves to a redesign of education should take the objective of fostering good judgment among children learning very seriously. For if freedom involves both the freedom to choose among alternatives and the freedom to carry out those alternatives that are selected, then children need to be made aware of the alternatives that are open to them, to help them discover the means needed to achieve these objectives and to become conscious of the consequences that might possibly flow from their realization.
To be sure, children’s liberation entails much more than the liberation of judgment, but this cannot conceal the fact that the fostering of good judgment is an indispensable component of children’s becoming free.
People sometimes remark that actually doing philosophy with one’s peers is too much for children, and yet if one studies the video tapes of children doing philosophy around the world, one concludes that not only can they do it well with a teacher who knows what she is doing, but often can do it as well, if not better, than adults.
One of the most impressive pieces of evidence that we have of children doing fine philosophy is Michel Sasseville’s (of the University of Laval in Quebec City) television series. He, with the help of his graduate students, has just finished l5 series of children doing philosophy that will be shown on public TV throughout all of Canada. As the children proceed, there is a voice over (Michel’s voice) pointing out the various philosophical moves that the children are making as they collaboratively inquire. Some of the children are as young as five years old. This television series, in turn, became the text for an ON LINE Introductory Course in Philosophy for Children for Teachers that is now available worldwide.
5. What is the relationship between Philosophy for Children (Philosophical Inquiry) and Scientific Inquiry?
When we talk of inquiry, we mean a self-corrective practice in which a subject matter is investigated with the aim of discovering or inventing ways of dealing with what is problematic. Inquiry often begins when problems arise regarding things, which till then had been taken for granted. The products of inquiry are judgments. We can have historical inquiry, religious inquiry, mathematical inquiry, aesthetic inquiry, language inquiry, scientific inquiry and philosophical inquiry.
When we speak of general inquiry skills, we are speaking of
1. Feeling of difficulty or frustration
2. Doubt
3. Formulation of the problem
4. Hypothesis formation
5. Efforts to test the hypothesis
6. Discovery of evidence which contradicts the hypothesis
7. Revising the hypothesis to account for contradictory evidence
8. Applying the revised hypothesis to life situation
It is primarily through inquiry skills that children learn to connect their present experiences with what has already happened in their lives and with what they can expect to happen. They learn to explain and predict, to identify causes and effects, means and ends, means and consequences as well as to distinguish these things from one another. They learn to formulate problems, estimate, and measure and develop the countless proficiencies that make up the practice association with the process of inquiry. Most important they learn how to self correct.
When a classroom has been converted into a community of inquiry, the moves that are made in order to inquire collaboratively are many. As the community proceeds with its deliberations, every move engenders some new sense of what is required. The discovery of a piece of evidence throws light on the nature of the further evidence that is now needed. The disclosure of a claim makes it necessary to discover the reasons for that claim. The making of an inference compels the participants to explore what was being assumed or taken for granted that led to the selection of that particular inference. A claim that several things being discussed are different demands that the question be raised of how they are to be distinguished. Each move sets up a train of countering or supporting moves involving reasoning and concept formation skills. As subsidiary issues are settled, the community’s sense of direction is confirmed and clarified, and the inquiry proceeds with renewed vigor.
In time the community might make some final judgment. But we should not delude ourselves with regard to these occasional settlements. They are perches or resting places, without finality. As Dewey puts it: “The settlements of a particular situation by a particular inquiry is no guarantee that that settled conclusion will always remain settled. The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter: there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. In scientific inquiry, the criterion of what is taken to be settled, or to be knowledge, is being so settled that it is available as a resource in further inquiry; not being settled in such a way as not to be subject to revision in further inquiry.” (Dewey, Logic, pp. 8-9).
If we were to redefine teaching and learning as inquiry-based activities, children and teachers can participate in the process, while at the same time improving thinking in both students and teachers.
Moreover, the school disciplines that shape our knowledge are themselves forms of inquiry – content enlivened and enriched by the ongoing processes of inquiry. In this interweaving of process and content, the concepts that are integral to the disciplines play a crucial role, as do the thinking procedures that are common to all the disciplines.
In practice, this means that teachers of science must tap into the conceptual cases of their discipline and allow their students full scope to explore contestable issues as they arise. As students gain an understanding of what it means to think scientifically, they will be well placed to integrate those aspects of the discipline that past generations have deemed to be of value. They will also come to appreciate that the discipline of science is itself interconnected in various ways with other disciplines, not entirely separate and unconnected, as the traditional school curriculum would lead them to believe.
Philosophical inquiry however is more than scientific inquiry. It is not only concerned with empirical problems but also with conceptual problems, logical problems, epistemological problems, ethical problems, aesthetic problems social and political problems ----- all of which may or may not have relevance to a particular scientific inquiry.
And there is something else. In Experience and Nature, Dewey puts forth a conception of philosophy as criticism. He locates philosophy as a special non-scientific form of cognition that is concerned with the judgment of value as a unique form of inquiry - a judgment of judgment, a “criticism of criticism”. (p. 398)
We turn to communal philosophical inquiry not only to find out what we value, but for what we can judge valuable, reasonable and just. In other words, philosophy is not descriptive but normative. It aims to help us to inquire into what we ought to do to bring about a better world.
It is in this sense that the function of philosophy is to bring about a joining of the new and the old, to articulate the basic principles and values of a culture, and to reconstruct these into a more coherent and imaginative vision. Philosophy is therefore essentially critical and, as such, will always have work to do. Indeed, in pointing the way to new ideals and in showing how these may be effectively realized, philosophy is one of the means we have for changing a culture.
Philosophy then is not some merely descriptive undertaking, nor is it a remote undertaking disengaged from the economic, social and political context in which we do not find ourselves, nor can values be ascertained without reference to the problems and conditions of human life. Nowhere can the function of reconstruction of human experience and criticism be better appreciated than in transforming classrooms into communities of philosophical inquiry.
In summary I would say that all good science teaching involves not only inquiry but also philosophical inquiry. However, it does not follow that all philosophical inquiry involves scientific inquiry.
6. Can you discuss the applied philosophy movement in the United States and why Lipman thinks that Philosophy for Children is the last achievement of Applied Philosophy? How did this movement lead to philosophy for Children?
I think the Applied Philosophy Movement in the U.S.A. was an outgrowth of the Sixties and the social and political consciousness of those times. As a culture we began to realize that there was a need for medical ethics, nursing ethics, environmental ethics, counseling informed by philosophy, business organizational ethics, police ethics, etc. etc. Further, it was thought that to do any of these things, one would need a general understanding of philosophy and its many sub-disciplines and how they relate to the enterprise at hand. For example, one cannot engage in police ethics without metaphysical, logical and epistemological considerations as they relate to the question “what is a person?”
The Sixties were also a time when we became conscious of the sexism and racism that pervaded our society. Thus courses in Feminist philosophy and Black philosophy appeared in many universities. These courses, although more general than Business Ethics or Medical Ethics, could not be divorced from the general area of applied philosophy.
When Lipman says that philosophy for children is the last achievement of applied philosophy, I would think that he probably means that it is the most general. If we are successful in transforming traditional classrooms into communities of philosophical inquiry, we are preparing the entire next generation with the social, emotional, cognitive and inquiry skills, dispositions and procedures that they need to be participatory, informed, critical, creative and caring citizens of the world.
7. Are we involved with a vicious circle in disseminating Philosophy for Children? Parents who have not been educated in communities of philosophical inquiry do not value such an education for their children? Are there any methods to promote thinking skills in adults?
I do not think we are necessarily involved in a vicious circle in bringing philosophy to the children of the world.
If one looks around the world, one sees philosophy in schools thriving in many countries and on many continents. One reason for this is that the general public is conscious that something essential has been missing from public education – that something is askew or wrong with how traditional education is preparing children to enter into the world of the 2lst Century – and they are willing to take the steps necessary to change the paradigm of good education in their states and nations.
Secondly, if one studies the original curriculum of Philosophy for Children, one begins to realize that the process of philosophical dialogue, once mastered, does not stop at the doors of the school. Often the fictional children bring home issues for discussion and parents find themselves drawn into philosophical inquiry at the dinner table or in the car. Discussions on “what constitutes a good reason?” or “how do we know when we have made a good judgment/: or “should we eat meat?” can become part of the daily experience of parents and children.
One Teacher Educator in Hawaii tells the story of one kindergarten child who participated in a community of philosophical inquiry and returned home to find his parents arguing. He felt quite helpless, but stayed in the room.
His mother was saying, “You never listen to me.”
His father responded, “I always listen to you, all the time.”
At this point, the child entered the conversation. “At school, we learned that we can tell when we are listening to each other.”
“And how can you tell?” asked his father.
“If you can repeat what the other person said in your own words, then you were probably listening,” responded the child.
“Daddy, can you repeat what Mommy said in your own words?”
Daddy, winking at his wife, answers, “I don’t think so, Peter. I guess I wasn’t really listening to Mommy.”
Finally, there is much evidence in the world that teachers can be prepared not only to think well, but to transform their classrooms into communities of philosophical inquiry. Teacher education workshops in philosophy for children are part and parcel of staff development in many countries. For the most part, the adults are invited to do philosophy much as the children will in the classroom. They are asked to read a section of the novel-as-text, to identify questions or issues that they might want to inquire into and to participate in the communal inquiry that ensues in an effort to investigate the question.
These workshops are conducted by prepared philosophers who have good experience with the curriculum and with the various procedures of good philosophical inquiry. They know when to turn to a discussion plan or exercise to deepen the dialogue; they model the asking of appropriate follow- up questions, they know how to call for alternative views, counter-examples and identification of assumptions. Further, they know how to create an atmosphere of trust and respect for persons that is conducive to people probing into their own assumption and questioning their validity in collaboration with other adults.
Such teacher educators are also experts in setting for various criteria for what constitutes a good community of philosophical inquiry and helping the teachers to evaluate their own discussions with an eye to self-correction. Teacher educators, like good teachers in the classroom, model the adage to be pedagogically strong, but philosophically self-effacing. Thus, they are successful in eliciting alternative views from adults and modeling procedures to try to help them decide among these alternatives, or perhaps cooperatively create new alternatives. It has been my experience, that in time, the teachers can internalize these procedures and one day find themselves conducting philosophical discussions in the classroom with their own students.
Such teachers very often consider themselves very lucky to be involved in an inquiry that equally stimulates their wonder, their curiosity and their willingness to actively engage in inquiry regarding their own assumptions and beliefs.
As Matthew Lipman says in Thinking in Education, teachers, whose professional life is given over to making judgments of how best to prepare students to make good judgments about philosophical issues, often discover themselves as co-inquirers involved in a practice that is most fulfilling and liberating for themselves, as well as their students. As she becomes more and more involved in teaching-as-inquiry, she finds her teaching taking on an excitement and joy that is most satisfying.
Just think of how much we could move toward the new paradigm of education as inquiry, if we could replicate these teacher workshops in the preparation of prospective teachers in the myriad of schools of education in the world.
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