Introduction

Generally acknowledged to be the originator of Philosophy for Children (P4C), Matthew Lipman, with Ann Margaret Sharp, founded the Institute of Advancement for Philosophy for Children (IAPC) in New Jersey in 1972. He sought to develop reasoning skills by teaching logic (Lipman, 1988), especially because he disagreed with the then fashionable Piagetian view that preadolescent children were incapable of formal operations, but he sought to teach philosophy indirectly through discussion of dramatic stories about a community of students. Harry Stottlemeier’s discovery (Lipman, 1974) traces Harry’s growing understanding of categorical logic in everyday experiences, but the word ‘syllogism’ does not appear in the story or the exercises in the accompanying manual. This attempt to make philosophical skills available to young children was said to ‘dumb down’ the subject, but it has become a part of international education, especially in Brazil. It did not succeed in the USA, partly because, as Knight and Collins (2006) argue, such open critique was not part of the dominant epistemology or prevailing hegemony. In 2010, the IAPC was forced to become financially independent of Montclair State College, and to close its international journal Thinking. Three of its most influential members have recently died: Ann Margaret Sharp in July 2010, Matthew Lipman in December 2010 and Gareth Matthews in April 2011.