P4c

The philosophy for children curriculum was specially written by Matthew
Lipman and colleagues for the teaching of philosophy by non-philosophically educated
teachers from foundation phase to further education colleges. In this article I argue that
such a curriculum is neither a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the teaching of
philosophical thinking. The philosophical knowledge and pedagogical tact of the teacher
remains salient, in that the open-ended and unpredictable nature of philosophical enquiry
demands of teachers to think in the moment and draw on their own knowledge and
experience of academic philosophy. Providing specialist training or induction in the P4C
curriculum cannot and should not replace undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in
academic philosophy at universities. However, although for academic philosophers the use
of the P4C curriculum could be beneficial, I will argue that its use poses the risk of wanting
to form children into the ideal ‘abnormal’ child, the thinking child—the adult philosopher’s
child positioned as such by the Lipman novels. The notion of narrativity is central in
my argument. With the help of two picturebooks—The Three Pigs (2001) by David
Weisner and Voices in the Park (1998) by Anthony Browne—I illustrate my claim that
philosophy as ‘side-shadowing’ or meta-thinking can only be generated in the space ‘in
between’ text, child and educator, thereby foregrounding a ‘pedagogy of exposure’ (Biesta
2011) rather than ‘teacher proof’ texts.

We start our paper with a critical exploration of the current “back to basics” approach in South African foundation phase teacher education with its emphasis on strengthening the teaching of subject knowledge. We claim that such a proposal first demands an answer to the question “what is foundational in foundation phase teaching?”. We propose an answer in three stages. First we argue that teacher education should be concerned not only with schooling or qualification (knowledge, skills and dispositions) and socialisation, but, drawing on Gert Biesta’s work, also on subjectification (educating the person towards the ability to make wise educational judgements). Secondly, these three aims of education lead to five core principles, and we finish by showing how these principles inform our storied, thinking and multimodal/semiotic curriculum. Our answer to our leading question is that pedagogical “know-how” and views of child and childhood constitute the subject knowledge that is foundational in the foundation phase curriculum.

In this paper I argue that insufficient attention is paid to the explicit teaching of comprehension in South African literacy policies and practices. Like elsewhere, governments reinforce the existing curriculum gap by trying to solve the achievement gap in early literacy. I substantiate my claim through a critical analysis of a report commissioned by the South African government and written by the National Education and Evaluation Unit (NEEDU). At an analytical level there is a logical problem with NEEDU’s recommendations about early literacy – there is a mismatch between the solutions and the problems it tries to solve. Unlike government responses to South Africa’s very poor results in national and international literacy tests, I claim that the findings of these tests point to the urgent need to teach higher-order questioning skills to teachers explicitly from preschool onwards. By referencing national and international research evidence of an approach to teaching and learning called Philosophy with Children, I argue that the inclusion of philosophical thinking in early childhood literacy education could help teach the ‘full literacy’ as recommended by the NEEDU report.

The article assumes that Lipman's paradigm of 'Philosophy for Children' (P4C) as a 'Community of Inquiry' (CI) is very useful in extending the range of philosophical practices and the benefits of philosophical community reflection to collective life as such. In particular, it examines the possible contribution of philosophy to the practical and ethical dynamics which, nowadays, seem to characterise many deliberative public contexts. Lipman's idea of CI is an interesting interpretative key for such contexts. As a result, the article highlights the possibility of understanding a CI essentially in terms of an ethics of responsibility.
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I wish to carry out a philosophical inquiry into contemporary intercultural public spheres. The thesis I will support is that the achievement of inclusive public spheres (namely, with respect to our European and Western experience, the accomplishment of democracy) largely depends on one’s willingness and capacity to foster an “appreciation of diversities” by first, enhancing policies and forms of cooperation between the citizens’ emotional and motivational resources, and then enhancing their cognitive competences. More specifically, my proposal is to understand such an effort from the viewpoint of post-Weberian responsibility, that is of an ethics and politics that overcome the traditional divisions between theory and practice, cognition and emotion, “Verantwortung” (responsibility) and “Gesinnung” (conviction), and therefore succeed in enhancing the citizens’ awareness and attitudes as – in Habermas’ words – “democratic co-legislators”. Fiinally, a case study of Matthew Lipman’s “Philosophy for Children/Community of Inquiry” succeeds precisely in embodying this cultural project.

In this article I focus on the notion of “reflective thinking” and on its theoretical and practical relevance. What I endeavour to achieve is that those dialogic practices employing “reflective thinking” succeed in showing that rationality (or system) and improvisation (or freedom) are mutually and inseparably intertwined. The case study of the “Philosophy for Children” (P4C) curriculum developed at the beginning of the 1970s by Matthew Lipman and other researchers provides evidence in order to achieve such result.

Problematic and complex aspects of democratic life – such as the teaching of the concept of civil liberties, the spreading of responsible participation and pluralistic dialogue, the mutual understanding of different cultures and individuals, and the fulfilment of a common civil life based upon shared rules, procedures, and reasonable dialogue – are not yet solved and certainly need to be frequently revisited and reviewed. I believe that Matthew Lipman’s reflection on philosophical community practice, although developed in the 1970s, is still relevant to our contemporary age. Although Lipman developed the idea of “Philosophy for Children” (P4C) and “Community of Inquiry” within the school context, and although he did not aim to immediately extend it to society as such, I think that there are very interesting reasons which can support this possibility. The present essay will precisely try to put them in evidence.

Critical thinking should not be considered an educational end because of problems with instrumentalism in reasoning practices. However, as an end-in-view subordinate to meliorist transitionalism, a 'third-wave' form of philosophical pragmatism, then critical thinking has a place in philosophising with children.

Recently fiction has been given a central role in the engagement in philosophical thinking, especially within an educational setting. We find many configurations of this intersection of the narrative and the philosophical and the variances among them need noting if we are to critically examine how each form works. But there remains a troubling question: can fiction really offer up philosophical ideas without failing as literature and missing the mark as philosophy? While allegories and analogies have a long and fruitful history of elucidating complex philosophical ideas, philosophers have taken pains to differentiate themselves from the crafter of tales. Philosophers have tended to prefer clear and sustained thinking through rational arguments over imaginative suggestion. Fiction is not philosophy. This paper will explore the different forms that narrative-as-philosophy can take and offer an assessment of the relative merits of these stories as invitations to philosophical thinking.