Children Philosophy

Children Philosophy

Children’s philosophy does not entail teaching traditional philosophy to children; instead, it is an approach that focuses on teaching thinking skills and the ability to question and reason. The strategy was developed by Mathew Lipman, who was a philosophy professor in the 1970s (Gorard et al., 2017). he was concerned with the concept of developing an education that would establish critical citizenry with empathy and respect for others in society. Children’s philosophy aims to develop critical thinking in children using philosophical dialogue evolves in a perspective of cooperation to enrich the view of the group versus competitive argumentation in which victory at all cost is the objective. The Lipman approach has been contested with researchers arguing that the thoughts it nurtures are not philosophical. Some say that children are not capable of thinking reflexively and critically. Others say that philosophizing requires encyclopedic knowledge and intellectual maturity characteristics not found in children (Siddiqui et al., 2019). There have been arguments on whether children’s philosophy should be considered as real philosophy. This paper seeks to investigate some of the thinking skills fostered by children’s philosophy and how it can lead to educationally significant results.

Literature Review

Philosophy is not consensual and is regarded to be an ancient activity. People are confronted with a different school of thoughts emphasizing universality and rationality, depending on times and culture. There are various definitions of philosophy, for example, philosophy of education, moral philosophy, epistemology, and political philosophy. Generally, philosophy is described as a discipline that studies concepts, and how the theories relate to each other, to better understand the world and nature of humans (Gorard et al., 2017). Children’s philosophy emphasizes more on the ability to think critically. The broad purpose of this paper is to help children realize their intellectual capabilities. It is, however, necessary to ensure that the research does not create an arbitrary variable when selecting and isolating the tests on children (Siddiqui et al., 2019). Studies have shown that children can function intellectually when in cooperative or collaborative situations compared to those working individually. It is essential to determine whether the social impulse in children results in improved cognitive performance and how the cognitive performance of the children can be measured using various tasks (Gorard et al., 2017). There is a gap in whether commonality has a positive effect on the cognitive proficiency of children. The study will require a shared experience and a collective commitment to an inquiry method. Analytical procedures are needed to enable individuals to identify the areas that they may have gone wrong in their thinking. It would be unacceptable to convert a classroom to a community of inquiry because it would on each person’s experience to ensure meaningful results are available to everyone (Gorard et al., 2017).

It would be futile to expound the community of inquiry objective to children as even though they could understand the outline, they would not comprehend its importance to themselves. They would require to be encouraged to hope that the idea they had glimpsed was viable to others who were young like them and inexperienced (Topping et al., 2019).  It hence calls for their imaginative power and recourse to their fiction. Instead of exhausting the children in a classroom, explaining to them the merits of inquiry, they can be shown in a fictional way the classroom community of inquiry. It should consist of ordinary children thinking about things of great importance to children. Matters of importance children include things such as personal identity and fairness, truth and friendship, goodness, and freedom. The children will also be required to spend time thinking about thinking, and the criteria to differentiate sound from unsound reasoning.

The community inquiry acts as the guiding tool for children’s philosophy. Allowing children to participate in a community of inquiry enables them to develop essential cognitive abilities such as clarifying their terms, offering examples and counterexamples, creating a hypothesis, questioning other people’s assumptions, following where the inquiry leads to, drawing inferences and giving and asking for sound reasoning. Community of inquiry also acts as a social enterprise by allowing children to express their own opinions and views, build as well as challenge other people’s ideas, listen to others, reconstruct their ideas, and look for fallacious reasoning.

Education is one of the primary needs of human beings as it enables them to be closer to the modern world. Society therefore needs smart, creative, and innovative people to correspond to the life happenings. Most of the schools focus on science and technology-based on cognitive approaches to transfer the knowledge to children ignoring the training of thoughtful and creative students. However, in the last decade, psychologists and scientists have come together and suggested that it is necessary to train children on thinking skills rather than transferring knowledge and science. The approach will enable children to think through their own natural intelligence abilities. Every person has the ability to think, making it necessary to put this potential into actual use. One of the primary dimensions of thoughts is critical thinking. There is a difference between critical thinking and ordinary thinking. Critical thinking is of exact proportions and is more complicated compared to ordinary thinking that is simple and has no criterion. Critical thinking enables an individual to analyze information and come to a conclusion as it is a dynamic process. The essential philosophy of thinking dates back to philosophy after john Dewey who published it (Topping et al., 2019). Critical thinking is considered a branch of logic referred to as practical logic. This type of logic removes uncertainty, utilizes mental discipline, transparency, criticism, and logic reasoning. The primary purpose of critical thinking is to comprehend problems, evaluate their point of view, and provide solutions.

Research Method

The research includes selecting programs that are not exhausting to the children in the thinking skills that the children’s philosophy program aims at polishing. A representative list will be developed, and for each ability, an exercise or example will be cited for the use of the knowledge. Models will be obtained from stories or novels identified by the researcher and introduced to the children to assist in improving their practical thinking skills. Exercises will be obtained from the instructional manuals that come with the novels. The chosen examples are not models but will be taken from everyday life experiences. The children are hence to find more instances where they can apply these skills, creating more practice opportunities. The program is not exempted from the various arbitrariness that accompanies lists of cognitive abilities in any educational program.  The menu consists of 30 skills that are closely related, while others are not listed because they represent higher-order combinations or because they are borderline cases (Topping et al., 2019). For example, in reading, some of the written material may be complex for the children who require the children to use most of their necessary skills, especially the inferential ones. However, by ensuring that only the inferential abilities are used, the children can obtain meaning, although the more dynamic processes of thinking would not be realized. The students are required to use all their skills to gain sense, ask questions, and consider alternatives on what is being said. Reading, writing, and mathematics are deemed to be essential skills that would be useful in determining what it means to be educated. Although the skills are labeled as fundamental, it does not imply that they cannot be analyzed into scores of elementary thinking skills (Siddiqui et al., 2019). By teaching students to coordinate the primary abilities, it will be possible to improve their performance.

The philosophy for children’s research will be done in a primary school whereby the teachers will be equipped with reasoning, thinking, and questioning skills. The children will be trained in analytical and reasoning skills. There will be the transfer of reasoning skills to mathematics, English, and science. The pupils participating in the study will be from primary three and primary four, and the study will take approximately one year and will be guided by the same teachers. The teachers will receive lessons on thinking skills through the use of workshops conducted by the study team. A 10-week online course will also be available for the teachers to ensure they are well equipped to guide the students. Two other classes will then be selected to act as control classes.

References

Gorard, S., Siddiqui, N., & See, B. H. (2017). Can ‘Philosophy for Children’improve primary school attainment?. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(1), 5-22. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9752.12227

Siddiqui, N., Gorard, S., & See, B. H. (2019). Can programs like Philosophy for Children help schools to look beyond academic attainment?. Educational Review, 71(2), 146-165.

Topping, K. J., Trickey, S., & Cleghorn, P. (2019). A Teacher’s Guide to Philosophy for Children. Routledge.