ABSTRACT
Your question reminds me the comments I heard many times when I tried to bring P4C to Laval University 30 years ago. Many were saying: well, if it is philosophy it is not for children and if it is for children it can’t be philosophy. Twenty years later, this comment totally disappeared. What happened?
I would say that the research of Vygotsky (1985) is now well known in the field of education. Piaget is no more the king in this discipline. Vygotsky’s insights, supported by many researches after his death, show clearly that children can work with abstract notions.
Some of my colleagues have rethought their conception of philosophy and, more specifically, their conception of how philosophy can be taught. If, as Lipman and Sharp did (1980, 1984, 1988, 1991, 1992),we redesign the teaching of philosophy in such a way that this discipline can be interesting and useful for children, then the possibility of doing it with children is evident.
We have seen a profound reform in education in Québec over the past 30 years and now, in primary school, we talk about competencies and transversal competencies and making critical judgments. More than that, the Ministry of Education of Québec says that the classroom should be transformed into a community of learners. In this context, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is more than welcome because doing philosophy with children means inviting them to become critical thinkers, not only that, but also that within a 90community of inquiry. This is exactly what people in primary schools are looking for. And here we are with more than 40 years of experience showing how this could be done and the impacts of doing this on the performance of the child in other disciplines. It is no surprise that people are more and more interested in P4C.
For nearly 30 years, we have trained thousands of teachers (by means of programs of formation, see https://philoenfant.org) who have learned how to do philosophy with children. So, with their help, we have collected a series of discussions among children showing that they can do philosophy if they are assisted by a teacher who knows how to invite them to engage themselves in philosophical inquiry. For sure, we can talk and talk theoretically about the capacity or not of the child to do philosophy. But there is nothing better than a base of observation to talk about it. And this base shows clearly that children can do philosophy.
In 2004, with the help of Laval University and Canal Savoir (an educative channel television in Québec), we have created a television series of 13 shows (30 minutes each) about Philosophy for Children. Called “Des enfants philosophent,” (Sasseville, 2004) this television series shows that children (from 6 to 12 years old) can engage themselves in a philosophical inquiry. What we see in this series is children trying to define concepts like friendship, love, war, curiosity, difference, justice, freedom, and on and on in such a way that they give reasons, examples, counter-examples, formulate hypothesis, are looking for criteria. All these moves (and many more) are those we can observe when we look carefully at what philosophers are doing. If there is a difference, it is only a difference of degree, not of kind. Just like when we see children playing baseball (or hockey or football). Even if they are not professional, no one would say that they are not playing baseball.