Thinking Through Philosophy – A programme for Children

This Upliftment ‘Pilot’ project was launched at a workshop given in April 2005 with the blessing of the Gauteng Department of Education; currently there are eight schools on board, two in Belgravia and six in Soweto.

The programme was conceived by a student of the SPP in Scotland in 2003 and has since been successfully implemented into the curriculums of certain schools both in Scotland and England.

Briefly, why philosophy for children? When people are first introduced to the idea of philosophy with children they are often dismissive. What is the point of teaching children philosophy when the curriculum is already overcrowded, and to what purpose? The first point to make therefore is that this is practical philosophy - it is about the process, not the teaching of facts, we are interested in the process of exploring philosophical questions through Socratic questioning. It is the dialogue that is important!

What is dialogue? (or dialectic to use the Socratic term). This is much more than mere conversation, and offers the exciting possibility that one's own ideas and perceptions may change in the process. To use the jargon, this process begins to develop a 'community of enquiry', wherein teacher and pupils learn and develop together. Following the introduction of a stimulus such as a story, poem, mystery or game philosophical questions are formulated from which the dialogue is derived. The key to developing good dialogue is the skill of the 'facilitator' (teacher) in asking good, open-ended questions and encouraging the children to develop the same. These will include such questions as:

Can you say more about that?
What makes you say that?
Do you have any evidence for that view?
How do you know that?
Why? Why? Why?
Is it possible to know if that is true?
Does anyone else support that view?

It is through this process of dialogue that many things begin to take place: Thinking skills are developed. These include:

Information Handling - processing skills about analysing, interpreting, locating.
Enquiry - posing and defining problems, planning, predicting, and testing conclusions.
Reasoning - giving reasons for opinions, making deductions, making judgments informed by evidence.
Creative Thinking - generating ideas, being imaginative in thinking, being innovative.
Evaluation - evaluating what is read or heard, developing criteria for judging.

Raising pupil attainment is something that is currently of high political profile, and consequently in a climate of constant testing and league tables, is never far from the consciousness of either individual teachers or school heads.

The objective of the Project is to raise sufficient funds in order to sustain and take forward current initiatives.