ABSTRACT
Philosophy for Children (henceforth P4C) is systematically presented as having among its main goals to democratize education and foster democratic citizenship. Some of the reasons supporting that claim are that in P4C children are invited to choose the topic they want to discuss, to practise the skills and habits of inquiry, and to learn to respect each other (Sharp 1993; Gregory 2004; Sasseville 2009). One of the central elements that P4C shares with democratic education is a certain perspective on authority. On the one hand, this perspective is obvious and clear by what it rejects, that is, a certain idea of what authority in an educational relationship should be, namely that teachers should not envision themselves as the absolute authority in the classroom. This rejection of what John Dewey called the ‘traditional’ model of education1 is a necessary step for the creation of a democratic space in the classroom, a space in which students can make decisions, voice their opinions and express and discover their real individual selves. On the other hand, this rejection of the ‘traditional’ model of authority does not reveal how we should understand authority. Does this new model entail a complete rejection of authority? Or rather, does it at the same time contain a proposal for a new vision of what authority should be, and, if so, how should we understand this innovative perspective?
