Philosophical Inquiry with Children

The Development of an Inquiring Society in Australia

Gilbert Burgh, Simone Thornton, Gilbert Burgh, Simone Thornton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429777134
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Philosophy in schools in Australia dates back to the 1980s and is rooted in the Philosophy for Children curriculum and pedagogy. Seeing potential for educational change, Australian advocates were quick to develop new classroom resources and innovative programs that have proved influential in educational practice throughout Australia and internationally. Behind their contributions lie key philosophical and educational discussions and controversies which have shaped attempts to introduce philosophy in schools and embed it in state and national curricula.

Drawing together a wide range of eminent scholars and practitioners in the field of educational philosophy, this anthology, the first of its kind, provides not only a historical narrative, but an opportunity to reflect on the insights and experiences of the authors that have made history. The collection is divided into three parts. The overarching theme of Part I is the early years of Philosophy for Children in Australia and how they informed the course that the 'philosophy in schools movement' would take. Part II focuses on the events and debates surrounding the development and production of new materials, including arguments for and against the suitability of the original Philosophy for Children curriculum. In Part III, key developments relating to teaching philosophy in schools are analysed.

This collection of diverse views, critical appraisals, and different perspectives of historical currents is intended to stimulate thought-provoking questions about theory and practice, and to increase general awareness both nationally and internationally of the maturation of philosophy in schools in Australia. It is also intended to encourage readers to identify emerging ideas and develop strategies for their implementation.

Part I

The development of philosophy for children in Australia

Introduction

Philosophy for Children (P4C) reached Australian shores in the mid-1980s. The immediate years that followed were marked by the concerted efforts of a network of committed individuals, brought together by the idea of teaching philosophy to children. Laurance Splitter and Jennifer Glaser recall in Chapter 1 how Splitter’s meeting with Mathew Lipman in 1982 marked the beginning of an Australian story – that was later to extend into Australasia. They detail how they started to expand the reach of P4C, with many educators looking for new approaches to the teaching of thinking finding, after attending workshops, that P4C an as educational approach was well equipped for the task.

In Chapter 2, Glaser and Anita Bass tell how advocates eager to introduce philosophy to students and teachers began experimenting in Australian classrooms with the imported curriculum resources developed by Lipman and Ann Sharp at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC). From these beginnings, informal networks developed around the country and grew into a federation of regional associations tasked with supporting members’ efforts, which included distributing resources, running workshops, raising the public profile of philosophy in schools, and building relationships between schools and universities, as well as other organisations and institutions. Splitter and May Leckey cover this period of development in Chapter 3, accounting for decisions made in favour of the federal organisational structure which developed through the late 1980s. The flurry of collaborative energy during this period was documented in the newsletters that were being produced, which culminated in the first Australasian journal for P4C, Critical & Creative Thinking, and after its demise, the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. Stephan Millett details this part of the history in Chapter 4. Importantly, the early advocates of P4C in Australia built organisational structures and communicative channels that could, it was hoped, facilitate the growth of philosophy in schools. Overall, however, this growth has, for the most part, been propelled by enthusiastic individuals, with some funding and institutional support.

The question of funding is partially addressed by Splitter and Leckey, who explain that during the period when the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) incorporated the Centre for Philosophy with Children and Adolescents, it funded its activities through a substantial grant from the federal government. This was during the period of the Hawke–Keating Labor government. This funding ended in the mid-1990s, and, notably, in 1996, the Howard-led Liberal–National coalition was elected, and with it came further and significant economic change, alongside shifts in higher education which impacted university funding and departmental restructures, and cultural shifts that saw a decrease in support and demand for philosophy courses. In this environment, academics increasingly found themselves jostling for funding. Their experiences in responding to factors like these did, however, allow an advantage to practitioners seeking to broaden their engagement internationally. Megan Jane Laverty reveals in Chapter 5 that the unique body of experience Australians had in dealing with the political, educational, and cultural environment of the states and territories helped them to export Australian practices overseas, and eventually to have influence on what has become a significant educational and philosophical movement. While not explicitly addressed, these contextual factors have informed the ways in which the early advocates approached community building, and it is, therefore, vital to read this section with this historical context in mind. To do so means to ask questions about who was able to acquire support and funding from their universities or schools, and how they were able to do so and, therefore, how opportunities arose to participate in events, activities, and initiatives to contribute to the direction of philosophy in schools in Australia. It also means looking more closely at where private-sector funding came from and which projects it supported; which grant applications were successful; who wielded institutional clout and why; perhaps, as well, discerning patterns in the answers to these kinds of questions.

These chapters celebrate the successes of the early advocates in Australia and provide for a better understanding of their context. Importantly, they acknowledge that the challenges during this period were historically specific and prompted similarly specific answers from the fledgling movement, which was learning how to strike a balance between commitment to the educational philosophy underpinning P4C, their own ideas of what a collaborative community should or could be like, and compromise in response to the specificity of Australia’s diverse political, educational, and economic environment. Bringing to light and critiquing the more discreet ways in which these contextual and structural forces have influenced the Australian story opens opportunities to reflect and draw on experiences that can shape future practice.

Gabrielle Mardon

1

Philosophy for children comes to Australia

Laurance J. Splitter and Jennifer Glaser

Introduction

This chapter provides an account of the early years of philosophy for children (p4c) in Australia. The first section explains how p4c came to Australia and is presented in the first person, through Laurance Splitter’s recollections. The second section traces the development of the Australian Institute of Philosophy for Children which saw increasing collaboration between individuals, schools and universities across Australia as p4c established a national structure. The final section explores the development of Philosophy for Children (P4C) in Australia via an observation by Matthew Lipman. At the very end of A life teaching thinking Lipman reflects: ‘I can say that I have no doubt that trading the post of a university lecturer in the Ivy League for the work of an educational entrepreneur was the right thing for me to do’ (Lipman 2008: 167). We conclude with this idea of educational entrepreneurship as an interesting lens to reflect on the development of p4c in Australia.

Laurance Splitter reflects on the early years: 1982–1985

‘Let’s start at the very beginning’, as Maria sang in The Sound of Music. But what was the beginning? Pinpointing the origins of an idea or a movement is a risky business, no less so in the case of philosophy for children. I do not know who the first person was to do philosophy with Australian children and teachers, although I do know that this person was not me. I acknowledge the efforts and foresight of those few individuals who brought philosophy and children together prior to 1982. My own motivation had its roots much further back in my past than my initial meetings with Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp. Still, it makes sense to begin with those meetings and move forward, while interpolating some reflections on earlier events and experiences as they seem, in retrospect, to be relevant.

The year was 1982. Having recently completed my doctorate in philosophy, from the University of Oxford while employed as a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Wollongong, I was taking my first sabbatical, spending most of it in the USA with colleagues working in the philosophy of biology, my research area at the time. I cannot remember what specifically moved me to do so, but in September 1982, I took a bus from New York City to Upper Montclair, New Jersey, to meet Lipman, who was Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) which was housed in a caravan on the grounds of Montclair State College. Like many others before and since, I came away deeply impressed by his conviction that philosophy in the hands and minds of the young was the key to improving education. I remember returning to NYC full to bursting with ideas about how Philosophy for Children – both as a curriculum and a methodology known as ‘community of inquiry’ – could be introduced back home.

Over the following years, while still at Wollongong, I became a regular visitor to Montclair, participating in, and co-directing several two-week residential teacher-educator courses which became known as the ‘Mendham experience’, after the name of the town in which they were held. I formed two ideas about what the term ‘Philosophy for Children’ stood for, ideas that were in some tension with each other. The first idea is that ‘Philosophy for Children’ (henceforth ‘P4C’) is a proper name denoting a specific curriculum and a particular set of procedures that include sitting in a circle, sharing a text, raising questions, and using the teachers’ manual to generate discussion. Lipman, particularly, was adamant that both the curriculum (i.e., the IAPC novels written by him and the accompanying teacher resource manuals) and the methodology he and Sharp created were essential to what P4C stood for. The second idea is that the term ‘philosophy for children’ (henceforth ‘p4c’) is best construed as a descriptor, not a proper name. It describes the process of doing philosophy with children, in whatever form that might take.

While I have viewed P4C as exemplary – which was why I strongly promoted the use of the IAPC curriculum in Australia, I never took it to exhaust the possibilities of resources that might be used when doing philosophy with children (i.e., p4c). However, I have always regarded the normative ideal of building a classroom community of inquiry, which underpinned the methodology of P4C (including all that it entails in terms of cultivating respectful student dialogue, the role of the teacher, etc.), as indispensable. The concept of community of inquiry predates P4C – going back to C.S. Peirce, Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey – and can be seen as crucial to all teaching and learning in every subject.

While this is not the place for a detailed elucidation of the community of inquiry paradigm, I do wish to emphasise one specific point, because it goes to the heart of what attracted me to p4c in the first place. p4c involves participation in communities of philosophical inquiry, meaning that the inquiry draws on traditions of philosophical thinking in the same way Peirce’s community of scientific inquiry draws on traditions of scientific thinking. However, over and above the benefits of giving children access to a philosophical tradition which had, by and large, excluded them, and providing an accessible structure in which they could share, reflect on, and improve the quality of their thinking, I bore witness to an affective, social and ethical environment in which treating one another as persons is crucial. The community of inquiry strikes exactly the right balance between the extremes of objectification (treating students as objects in the name of transmitting knowledge, training future citizens, and initiating young people into the norms of the prevailing culture), on the one hand, and subjectification (pandering to whatever they think, believe and desire, in the name of constructivism and a child-centred curriculum), on the other.

My initial encounters with p4c confirmed several views that I had come to about philosophy or, rather, about where I stood in relation to philosophy. The first I shared with Lipman. Teaching undergraduates who could not think conceptually, follow a line of argument, or engage in dialogue led me to conclude that these competencies should be internalised at a much younger age. The second pertained to the ‘Alpha-male’ environment of the philosophy seminar classroom in many universities, where the desire to ‘score points’ or win the argument overrode considerations of basic respect, care and empathy, was all too real. I have been both perpetrator and victim of such assaults. In p4c we teach children to critique what was said in a way that is respectful and caring toward the person who said it. While focusing on the ‘what’ is an important feature of inquiry, it runs the risk of ignoring the reality that ideas don’t just drop out of thin air. The community of inquiry draws attention to the fact that ideas originate in people who have feelings as well as opinions (which is why it is important to teach children to disagree respectfully).¹

From 1983, my time and energy were, increasingly, spent outside the university.

In retrospect, my early approach to promoting p4c was quite naïve. I thought that the case in favour of p4c was (i) overwhelming and, therefore, (ii) bound to be accepted by all stake-holders in education. My belief concerning (i) is, if anything, stronger now than before, but it cannot be taken for granted. I quickly learned that attempting to impress administrators in their offices was a flawed strategy. To be truly moved, one must see p4c in practice, either with adults such as teachers, or (preferably) with children. Even in a one-off demonstration – of which I had conducted 100 or more by 1988 – the shared reading of a philosophical story with children can spark off a philosophical discussion of considerable depth and energy, enough to convince all but the most hardened sceptic that something both new and truly exciting is going on.

I have never regretted becoming involved in p4c, and I remain convinced that whatever contribution I have made in that domain is greater than what I might have contributed to academic philosophy. I admire those who could ‘turn the wheels’ of philosophy through their own research and teaching, and I confess that I, also, wanted to ‘turn some wheels’, albeit in a different way. When I facilitated or just observed a group of young people engaged in philosophical dialogue I was continually moved and delighted by the freshness of their insights, the depths of their imaginations, and their eagerness to grapple with difficult ideas and make sense of them. I sometimes invited academic philosophers to observe such classes, and their summary comments were often along the lines of ‘Interesting, but not much happening philosophically’. I am not sure if such remarks reflected my own facilitation or something more intrinsic about doing p4c (namely, that originality in philosophy is the province of more mature minds and, even then, only some of them), but what I want to emphasise here is that even if it was the latter, it doesn’t really matter. What happens in p4c is so significant on intellectual, social, ethical and affective/personal grounds that judgments of philosophical originality become irrelevant. Granted, many philosophical ideas come to us from the past, but they can well up anew in the minds of children.

I am not saying that judgments regarding philosophical content and procedure are irrelevant. One of the challenges facing teachers with no formal training in philosophy i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the editors
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Editorial Introduction: The philosophical classroom An Australian story
• Part I: The development of philosophy for children in Australia
• Part II: Ideas into books
• Part III: Philosophy in schools
• Part IV: Reflections
• Tributes
• Index