Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children

The ongoing series of global financial crises offers some important philosophical lessons and insights for educators. The epistemological lesson is stark: we should beware of certainty and all claims to it. Were the disposition of generic skepticism in place at all levels of schooling, then the intellectual rigidity that has characterized economics as a “discipline” would be balanced by demands to consider possible alternatives. The ethical lessons to be learned include ensuring that ethics, as a form of rigorous but openended inquiry into key questions about the kind of world in which we want to live, be included in every classroom and curriculum. At the center of this inquiry are relationships, most notably those between and among individual persons, on the one hand, and those between persons and the groups to which they belong and on which they are often said to depend, on the other. Such relationships also have an aesthetic dimension, in terms of their place in building, not just an ethically better world, but a more wholesome, integrated and harmonious world.

Both Walter Kohan (2002) and Nancy Vansieleghem (2005) have questioned the aims of Philosophy for Children (P4C). It is the intention of this current paper to pursue the line of inquiry opened up by these authors, but from the standpoint of John Dewey’s pragmatism. Dewey’s philosophy shifts the focus from discovering the aim of P4C to aims in the particular contexts in which P4C operates. As such, aims in education (including P4C) are seen as: required for intelligent education, inseparable from the means, contingent upon specific contexts, used for ethico-politico-aesthetic purposes, multiple and complementary, and internally generated from those engaged in the practice.

Because the Harry Potter novels are set in Harry’s school, conversations with children about the books give insights into their thinking about teachers and school. Conversations with Serbian children about the books reveal a perspective on the ethical landscape of schools that is distinct from familiar scholarly perspectives on children’s ethics, particularly the ethics of fairness and caring. Serbian children judged teachers to be good if they were “strict but not too strict.” The “strict but not too strict” axis along which Serbian children aligned teachers is here explicated and compared to alternative ways of judging teachers good or bad. This article concludes that while the “strict but not too strict” standard has significant weaknesses, it deserves to be taken seriously as a conception of how imperfect human beings create relationships that promote human good, as well as a commentary on the role of the teacher.

This paper considers one key aspect of doing Philosophy with Children; the use of children’s questions. In particular, the paper reflects upon the place and importance of children’s questions in McCall’s Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI). Generally children are allowed, within Philosophy with Children practices to ask their own questions. In some approaches questions are set for the children to inquire into. These questions often come from teachers’ manuals. What is different about McCall’s CoPI is that the facilitator selects the question for the inquiry and not the children. McCall’s CoPI is practised by facilitators with a background in philosophy, who are therefore able to recognise the philosophical potential in children’s own questions and who are also able to structure dialogue to stimulate and engender philosophical dialogue. In the article it is further suggested that not using children’s questions to promote philosophical dialogue, poses some fundamental questions about how children are perceived and how this may impact upon their place and potential voices in society.

Philosophy courses are compulsory in all high schools and vocational schools in Turkey. These courses give students a vision by showing how problems have developed historically and been discussed systematically. Since 2006, a new course, called “Education of Thinking” has been introduced as an elective course for 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. This course provides more opportunities for philosophical development in children’s activities. The aim of this course is to enable students to be “ a subject” and “ a critical thinker” by doing philosophy and practising thinking skills.Education in philosophy is in fact the education of thinking. As indicated by Lipman, for the improvement of thinking in the schools, the most important dimensions of thinking to be cultivated are the critical, the creative, and the caring. Success in this education can be ensured by educating children in philosophy. In this paper, I will examine and share the benefits of doing philosophy in the classroom in Turkey.

This article reports on an empirical qualitative study on applying a Philosophy for Children (P4C) modeled science story to support the teaching of basic science process skills of classification, observation, and inference to a group of fifth-grade science students. The science story was written to model the skills for the children. From individual interviews with a focus group of 10 students, the findings show that the story modeled the understanding of classification, observation, and inference skills for the children as well as encouraged reflection on the meaning of inference. The majority of the students identified with the fictional characters, particularly regarding traits such as cleverness and inquisitiveness, and with the learning context of the story. Implications for the theory and practice of P4C are discussed.

To investigate the effect of philosophical thinking on the development of reasoning skills and behavioral performance among Iranian primary school students, we conducted a qualitative method study with ten fourth grade students (including boys and girls)selected from different primary schools in Tehran1. We also study the reactions of children and their parents to this new method of education, which thoroughly differs from the method practiced in our schools now. This study was carried out in the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, as an extra class once a week for twenty sessions. Data collection strategies of this study including the authors’ observations during sessions, children’s parents’ observations and reports, and interviews with children and their parents. Our research result shows that reasoning skills enhance communication skills by enabling children to express their ideas more persuasively. We also found that children act more confidently and independently.