Philosophy for Children

Philosophy for children which is also known as P4C is a movement that ventures to develop reasoning and argumentative skills in children. While one section argues that children cannot think critically till the age of 11, another section feels that children benefit from philosophical inquiry at primary school. There is enough evidence to prove that teaching a child to reason at a very young age improves his cognitive and academic skills in life.

While it is common in the United States and Europe to introduce philosophy in the high school or college curriculum, an argument arose about introduction of philosophy to pre-adolescents. Besides that educationalists considered that students would be distracted if philosophy was introduced in the already crowded curriculum. The proponents understood that stories about roughly their own age made children discuss ideas that were important to them. The stories thus constructed would have invitation to explore moral nuances of reciprocity. 

One of the notable proponents, Gareth Matthews, creates a philosophical setting and gets the student to make the philosophical problem their own. He creates a philosophically stimulating story, gets the comments of the students and blends them with the characters of the story and continues to the next session for further discussion. Such interactions are compiled in his book, ‘Dialogues with Children’. While Gareth Matthew’s approach is more open, another worker Matthew Lipman’s approach is more channelized and contemporary.

Will Ord, a UK based educationalist works with teachers to build a community of enquiry, where participants create their own questions and learn in the process. Will uses striking photos in his technique. The students are required to observe the photos and ask questions based on that. United States, however, conducts a lot of programs and competitions on this regard. An annual Philosophy Slam competition is conducted in the United States every year from which the childrens society benefits a lot spiritually. Junior children are encouraged to submit artwork based on philosophy while senior children are asked for written work. Besides these, two prominent journals named ‘Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children’ and ‘Questions: Philosophy for Young People’ are published on this regard. Besides that, a number of books like ‘Thinking in Education’, ‘Big Ideas for Little Kids’, ‘Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts’, ‘Young person’s Guide to Philosophy’, ‘Games for Thinking’, ‘Stories for Thinking’ and ‘Poems for Thinking’ to name a few, are published on this regard.

Questions:

• Who wrote the book of “Dialogues with children”?
• Write the title of two books which are published  on the regard of philosophy and children?