ABSTRACT

Traditional Confucian thought is manifested in Taiwan educational institutions by showing deference to the power and authority of elders – parents and teachers – in knowledge transmission. It is no coincidence that statues of Confucius can be found at entrances to elementary school campuses such as Long’an Elementary School in Taipei and National Taiwan Normal University, the premier teacher training institution in Taiwan. Yet this traditional style of teaching – the teacher talking and the student listening – inhibits the cultivation of logical thinking skills and the resolution of problems by civil discussion. In this chapter I will analyze how P4C in Taiwan has approached teaching children, the focus of the Caterpillar Philosophy for Children Foundation’s first years as an institution as well as the process of localization of textbooks and methodology. Finally, I will discuss how we came to teach parent groups and classroom teachers once we understood the problem went deeper than simply cultivating children’s thinking skills: we needed to change traditional Confucian assumptions about children that are deeply embedded in both parents and teachers in Taiwan. We turned to children’s picture books, storytelling and story acting as means to encourage critical thinking skills in children.