What is philosophy for children?

 

by

 

Per Jespersen

 

Philosophy as such is the oldest science of the world. It began in Babylon, went on to the Arabian countries, Egypt included, and spread to Greece. Normally we hear that philosophy began in Greece, but the Greek philosophers had their ideas from Egypt. But still: Greece and the culture of this country built the foundation of Europe (together with Christianity). Without the rich Greek culture there would be no Europe as we know it. But there would have been no Greece without Egypt. Many Arabs moved to Malta long before Greece was a modern society, and most of the Greek philosophers went to Malta to get inspiration from the rich and mature Arab culture.

In ancient Greece philosophy was known by everybody, mostly because of Socrates and his work (he did not write a sentence!) and the mathematicians Phytagoras and Archimedes. Philosophy started with wondering. As every child on this planet wonders about everything and puts questions to everything in order to know more, mankind did the same. From the very beginning of our long history human beings have questioned anything they met. Why does the sun rise? Where is it at night? Is the Earth really flat? What is Life for? And so on and so forth. That is the same every child does. Children are born curious, because without curiosity you would get nowhere. And the school should build on this curiosity, i.e. that it should not barely teach, but first of all stimulate the natural curiosity of the child. This means that it is possible to present a new subject or a new issue by being curious about it together with the children. The teacher ought to keep the curiosity and awaken it, if it is not there, i.e. present new issues as if it were the first time in the world, that this very issue was presented or discussed.

This inevitably means that the curriculums of all schools should be changed, because the most crucial thing for a teacher is to keep the innate curiosity of the child. This means that the motivation will always be there, and it will be fun to go to school.

Well, we cannot change all the schools of the world. But we can take in a new subject called “philosophy for children”, in short: p4c. In these lessons, there should be a couple of them every week, we can teach the children to discuss texts, which have been worked out for p4c, i.e. there is philosophical problems in the story told. The teacher’s role is to be a catalyst for the discussion. The teachers has to change his attitude: he is no longer the one who knows everything, but the one who knows nothing! He should be on the level, on which the children live their lives. So by using the texts and its contents of philosophical issues, he is supposed to raise a discussion, a dialogue, a debate about the children’s attitudes to the philosophical issues from the text.

Suppose you read a small story with the class. In the story some children are discussing whether there is a God or not. The teacher does not tell the children, what his attitude to God or religion is, but starts with a question: What are the children discussing in this story? What do you think about that? Try to tell the class what you mean! You will see that this question will be of great interest for most children, because they have already wondered about the concept God. You as a teacher should never show your opinion, and if the children ask for it (it happens very seldom), you  can always answer with another question: What do you think my opinion is?

Therefore, when the p4c-lesson is finished and the bell goes, you have not found any conclusion. But you have reached another goal: the children will go on wondering, and they have discovered during the lesson, that “I’m not the only one in the whole, wide world, wondering about this.” This is crucial. Many children are lonesome and feel that they are different from others and find it terrible to be different. During the p4c lessons they discover, that the other children do ponder about these things, and believe me: You can experience, that when the bell goes and the lesson is over, the children yell: “Oh no, already – it was so exciting. I don’t want a break now!”

On this site you will find numerous texts for discussions in Danish and English. They are free for you to print and use in class and we wish you all the best with them.

 

If you want to know more and see more texts on p4c you have the following possibilities:

http://home12.inet.tele.dk/fil/    (Many languages)

http://www.p4c.dk/ (English)

http://www.filovision.k-nettet.dk/ (Danish)

http://www.skole-forum.dk/  (Danish and English)

http://www.skoletorget.no/ (Norwegian)

 

Or search the internet for p4c!

 

If you want to contact us, mail to: p4c11@hotmail.com