Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education

Between Critical Thinking and Spiritual Contemplation

Guro Hansen Helskog

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351033961
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education proposes the innovative and holistic Dialogos approach to practical philosophy as a way of facilitating wisdom-oriented pedagogy. The book encourages individual and collective development through dialectical interplays between personal life, philosophical concepts and subject matter.

Based on two decades of the author's reflective pedagogical practice research, this book develops a philosophy of dialogical relationships. It analyses approaches to philosophical practice and suggests facilitation moves and philosophical exercises that can be adapted across educational levels, school subjects and higher education disciplines. Chapters provide examples of transformative philosophical group dialogues and suggest pathways towards multi perspective thinking, mutual understanding and wisdom in culturally diverse contexts.

Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education can be used as a holistic approach to democracy education, peace education, education for sustainable living and wellbeing. The book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of teacher education, philosophy of education and higher education. It will also appeal to practising professionals such as teachers and teacher educators in secondary and higher education.

Chapter 1

Prologue

What is wisdom? What might a pedagogical approach that can contribute to the awakening of young people’s longing and search for wisdom look like? Is it possible to create such an approach, and if yes, how?

These questions underlay the work that constitutes this book. Boiled down to the single sentence used as its title, the book is about philosophising the Dialogos way toward wisdom in education. Concretely, philosophising the Dialogos way implies engaging in a series of varied dialogues and dialogical exercises over some time. Three to four full days in a row is one option. An hour or two a week over 12 to 20 weeks another. However, this is a minimum if one is to work in line with the Dialogos approach. Contentwise, a Dialogos dialogue series should first and foremost include philosophical dialogues upon universal existential and ethical questions drawing on the world`s global philosophical, spiritual or religious traditions, such as What is respect? What is courage?, What does it imply to act compassionately? How can I become happy? How can we build trust? or What do I do when I forgive someone? In these cases, the main concept in the questions can be used as a focus point, a regulative ideal or a compass for the philosophical dialogue process. Gradually, the concept that is empty in the beginning of a dialogue, can be filled with content in the course of the dialogue, through the method of collaborative reflection upon past experiences. Secondly, philosophising the Dialogos way should involve exercises where interpretation of texts and pieces of art is at the centre, and thirdly, it should involve exercises where critical analysis, logical argumentation and conceptual abstractions are at the core. Fourth, short periods of meditation and/or spiritual contemplation of profound and meaningful content should be included.. However, maybe the most important aspect of philosophising the Dialogos way is the profound encounters between participants when they engage in heart to heart communication with each other about a shared subject matter, driven by the will to wisdom.

Philosophising the Dialogos way can easily imply engaging with the content and subject matter of traditional school subjects and academic disciplines. A criterion is that participants should connect the content to their personal lives. In addition to traditional ways of engaging with subject matter, they can be encouraged to reflect upon questions like: What does this content say to me personally? Do I have experiences that can help me understand what I am reading now? Do I have experiences that challenges or contradicts this theory? Do I know of other people who might have such experiences? What implications do this content have for understanding life in the society or culture that I live in? From here, questions can be formulated that are of interest and relevance to a majority of students. For instance, when studying the great historical revolutions, some possible questions that could be extracted and formulated are What is justice? What is peaceful collaboration? What are the limits of our responsibility for the development of the world? What does it imply to work for change? When exploring a chosen question, the students can look for examples from their own life where they experienced justice or injustice, collaborating peacefully, or taking responsibility for their community, in order to get a better understanding of the forces involved in revolutions. When working with the topic sustainable development, questions concerning one`s personal responsibility could be extracted and formulated: Am I responsible for the plastic pollution of the oceans? What is the relationship between my acts and global development? By this, connections are made between the personal and the global, the private and the public. Students can gradually see how their lives are intertwined in complex social, cultural and historical structures, and thus connect aspects of their personal lives with the content of school subjects in profound ways.

This represents a new and different form of pedagogy, where interpretations of tradition can be developed in connection to the lives of the students here and now. The role of the teacher in this form of pedagogy is that of a facilitator of collaborative thinking through dialogue, rather than that of a transmitter of pre-existing knowledge. Questioning content and exploring different perspectives is here more important than reaching final answers and conclusions. Rather, both the students and the teacher are left in the open, free to integrate divergent perspectives into more unified stances.

Of course, this form of philosophical and dialogical pedagogy cannot and should not fully substitute traditional forms of teaching. Rather, it should be a supplement to, or better, an integrated aspect of, traditional disciplinary lectures, literature studies and problem solving tasks. Hence, I agree with Hannah Arendt, who in “The crisis of Education” (Arendt 1954) argues that pedagogy needs to be conservative. Children are born into a world that already exists, and school should introduce new generations to the knowledge and insights developed through tradition. However, what I add to this argument is the proposition that students should be given the opportunity to connect their own personal lives to global tradition through the methods of questioning and dialogical thinking. A prerequisite is that we open up for the possibility that there is truth content or meaning in all the great traditions of the world, philosophical and spiritual alike, and that seemingly opposite positions can be meaningful at the same time. This has implications for how to meet people of different worldviews, and engage with each other in dialogue. To enter a dialogue and assume that one’s own worldview is the right one, is a-dialogical, and counter-productive to a wisdom oriented pedagogy. Instead, we need to explore each other’s perspectives with the willingness to change our mind if needed. This kind of openness is one of the most important virtues involved in philosophising the Dialogos way.

Building on experiences with developing the book series Dialogos – practical philosophy in school,¹ trying it out and reflecting upon the experiences through several research projects,² I am bold enough to claim that philosophising the Dialogos way is a powerful way to promote individual and collective wisdom, regardless of participants’ age, cultural background and interpretation of life. This statement will be discussed more thoroughly especially in chapters 3 and 5. Let me here in the prologue begin with a brief discussion of an introductory example that shows aspects of how a Dialogos dialogue series can be set up, how it can be facilitated, and how the relationship between wisdom and philosophising can be understood.

Philosophising the Dialogos way toward wisdom in practice

I had arranged the room for three types of activities. In front of the whiteboard in the innermost section of the room, 11 chairs were placed in a circle. In the middle of the room I had created a big table for everyone to gather around when engaging with material on the screen. Close to the door, separate desks for individual participants were placed in line. These desks were for individual thinking during one of the tasks I had prepared. Hence, I had organized the room in ways that would support the philosophical activity at different points during the weekend. Moreover, I had prepared a framework with room for the main approaches involved in philosophising the Dialogos way, starting in people’s lived life. This was the program for the weekend:

Friday 15.00–19.30

Personal question

Philosophical questions

Philosophical dialogue

Saturday 10.00–19.30

Comparative philosophical dialogue

Philosophical tour in Drammen: hermeneutical and Critical-analytical work based in art

Philosophical exercises

Passion in action – philosophising upon the role of feelings in actions

Contemplation – using a reading from the Dao te Ching

Sunday 10.00–14.00

Philosophical dialogue: What is the relationship between philosophising and development of self-understanding?

Meta-reflection: Searching for wisdom the Dialogos way

I made adjustments to this tentative program as the workshop developed. For instance, I included a dynamic meditation exercise between the work on emotion and the contemplative exercise. First, dancing to music for seven minutes. Then standing silently for seven minutes. Then sitting for seven minutes and finally laying down for seven minutes. Probably needless to say, many participants were brought out of their comfort zone during this activity. However, this can in itself be an important philosophical experience, forcing us to look at ourselves from a different perspective than normal.

The philosophical questions created by participants on Friday afternoon were perfect for our philosophical work on Sunday, making me reformulate my suggested question in order to include the questions of the participants. The participants ordered their priority as follows:

1. How can I be wise?
2. What is the relationship between philosophising and the development of wisdom?
3. How can I bring wisdom to the world?

Sunday morning they were sitting in the circle again, facing each other, seemingly eager to find out what kind of insights this last day would bring. So was I, and I asked them for permission to write about our dialogue in this book that I was working on. They all gave their permission, and in the following, I will give a brief description of the structure and content of our dialogue. I include it for three reasons. First, I would like to give you, my reader, a first impression of how a philosophical dialogue might be structured and facilitated. Second, the content of the dialogue goes to the core of this book. The participants explored not only how to be wise, and the relationship between wisdom and philosophising. They did it in such a way and with results that constitute the perfect example for a prologue like the one you are reading now. Third, starting with the narration of a practical experience is in line with reflective practice research as advocated by Anders Lindseth (2017), to which I will return.

How can I be wise?

Inspired by Socratic dialogue in the Nelson-Heckman tradition (see Chapter 4), I asked each and every one of the participants to find an example of once in their life where they experienced to be wise. The examples shared by the participants involved experiences of:

• changing one’s work place
• not sending an e-mail in a situation of affect
• “sleeping on” a decision before acting
• seeking help to change one`s way of relating to a family member
• organizing life differently to cope with heavy responsibility
• see possibilities instead of hindrances
• choosing to see one’s parent(s) in a different perspective.

The example chosen by the group was the one where the example giver chose not to send an e-mail in a situation of affect. The person’s first reaction was to want to respond immediately, as the e-mail had made him/her upset, hurt, and angry. S/he experienced that the person sending the e-mail had broken an agreement. But instead of sending the e-mail, s/he decided to wait until the day after, then ending up not sending a response at all.

Going deeply into the perspective of the example giver – first through questions to details in the example, and then by philosophising generally – participants suggested that wisdom in this example and more generally implied:

• acknowledging one’s own feelings and reactions in a situation, and calm down, making the effort to see and embrace one’s own pain, and accept the feelings, while also acknowledging the feelings of the other;
• considering what is most important in order to obtain a shared goal; letting something outside of ourselves lead (i.e. a shared goal, an idea of what would be universally good or other);
• understanding the role of right timing and of patience; taking the time needed to find the best possible course of action;
• embracing difference; not trying to force other people to do or give something they are not capable of giving;
• letting go of one’s own expectations and of the assumptions that one`s own needs are the same as the needs of the other;
• letting the lower dimensions of the ego (destructive feelings which we all have and which are deeply human) serve as a red flag and indicator that wisdom is needed. This is where wisdom comes in;
• understanding the difference between reacting with furious verbal attack and calmly saying that “we have some issues here”;
• not arriving at conclusions, but rather opening up for different possibilities;
• understanding that wise action is always situational;
• acknowledging that one does not know all aspects of the situation;
• asking oneself the questions: “What kind of human being do I want to be?” “How can I communicate honestly without letting my ego come in the way?”

When one of the participants after approximately two hours of philosophising on the first question, argued that “we need to be in dialogue with others in order to become wise”, it was as if space was created in time for a move toward the second question: What is the relationship between philosophising and the development of wisdom?

What is the relationship between philosophising and the development of wisdom?

During our dialogue, the participants kept referring back to the philosophical dialogues and exercises we had during the weekend, and to their shared experience that philosophising together this weekend had already made them wiser. Because they were so deeply immersed in this experience, I chose a facilitation move that was oriented towards generalization and abstraction rather than concretization and exemplification. By this, I wanted to give them the chance to transcend these experiences, and look at them from a more distant and objective perspective. Concretely, I asked participants to write a statement that could serve as an initial answer to the question, from where we could depart. This move created a thoughtful, contemplative atmosphere in the room for a few minutes, while participants were thinking and writing. The suggestion of one of them was written on a flip chart paper for all to see, as a place to depart:

If wisdom

1 comes through reflection

2 requires patience

3 embraces difference

and philosophising

1 is a reflective process

2 that takes time

3 and welcomes difference

then wisdom follows from philosophising

The group philosophised upon this suggestion for half an hour or so, looking at the different elements, arguing back and forth. One person wanted to add that openness was essential to the development of wisdom. People placing themselves within dogmatic religion mostly believe in one answer, while wisdom require openness to the possibility of multiple answers, this person argued The wise person is open to the idea that as humans, we can never fully know. Moreover, the wise person is open to other people’s views. Hence, wisdom requires the ability to go beyond our own little world in a form of transcendence, and the dogmatic religious person is often not open in this sense, s/he argued. This suggestion was discus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1. Prologue
• 2. Perspectives on wisdom and wisdom development
• 3. A wisdom oriented pedagogy in the making
• 4. Ways of philosophising
• 5. Philosophising the Dialogos way - basic attitudes
• 6. Facilitating Dialogos philosophical dialogues
• 7. Dialogos philosophical exercises
• 8. Epilogue
• References
• Index