Philosophy as the Missing Link in Our School’s Curriculum

A read­er and writer sent us over the week­end the arti­cle below as “an OpEd sub­mis­sion”. We are not a news­pa­per, and don’t have a for­mal OpEd sec­tion, but are delight­ed to pub­lish thought­ful, research-based pieces on top­ics relat­ed to life­long cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment and health.

Here you are:

—-

Phi­los­o­phy as the Miss­ing Link An Eye-Open­ing Audit of Our School’s Curriculum
By: Kim­ber­ly Wickham

The ques­tion might be asked, “Why would any­one want to teach phi­los­o­phy to pre-ado­les­cent chil­dren?” but there are very good rea­sons why one might want to take on such a lofty task. I am not sug­gest­ing that the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy would be par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent for a young child to learn, but there is sub­stan­tial evi­dence to sup­port the devel­op­ment of an already nat­ur­al ten­den­cy towards philo­soph­i­cal thought. Some may think that the pre-ado­les­cents haven’t got the cog­ni­tive devel­op­men­tal abil­i­ty to wrap their minds around such an elu­sive and sub­jec­tive study as phi­los­o­phy. How­ev­er, devel­op­ing this skill has shown long term pos­i­tive effects. These effects range from devel­op­ing crit­i­cal think­ing skills and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty to rais­ing emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty and encour­ag­ing the child’s sense of secu­ri­ty with­in his or her world.

For years there has been an empha­sis on cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal aspects of chil­drens devel­op­ment, but recent­ly more atten­tion is being placed on both the social and emo­tion­al aspects of a child’s devel­op­ment. It is becom­ing rec­og­nized that a child’s emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty has a big impact on their abil­i­ty to learn and process infor­ma­tion. While that, at first blush, may seem an obvi­ous con­clu­sion there is a lit­tle more to the sto­ry. A child’s emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty and self esteem has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on his or her behav­ior as well. An increas­ing num­ber of chil­dren are being iden­ti­fied as need­ing addi­tion­al learn­ing strate­gies and show­ing chal­leng­ing behav­iors. Edu­ca­tion sys­tems are strug­gling to find cre­ative meth­ods to address these needs before the prob­lems arise.

It is rec­og­nized that a child’s abil­i­ty to learn depends on how advanced they are at man­ag­ing per­son­al and social tasks. Their work suf­fers when they are inca­pable of cop­ing effec­tive­ly with impor­tant skills such as the abil­i­ty to be aware of oth­ers feel­ings, man­age rela­tion­ships and be part of a social com­mu­ni­ty. Encour­ag­ing philo­soph­i­cal thought and devel­op­ing crit­i­cal think­ing skills in pre-ado­les­cent chil­dren pro­vides a foun­da­tion for cog­ni­tive, social and emo­tion­al skills to flourish.

Chil­dren con­tin­u­al­ly ask philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions with­out prompt­ing, such as: “If I squeeze my eyes shut real­ly tight­ly and I can’t see where I am, does that make where I am become some­where else? As adults used to nav­i­gat­ing the world in our cur­rent under­stand­ing of real­i­ty we answer these types of ques­tions fol­low­ing the strict rules of our present view, but it might be far more use­ful to the child to encour­age exam­i­na­tion of the ques­tion. For exam­ple an appro­pri­ate response might be, “What do you think about that?” Fur­ther dis­cus­sion can take place when the child has had a chance to explore their own opin­ions and ideas about their phys­i­cal real­i­ty, for example.

A pre-ado­les­cent child may not move as fast and furi­ous­ly through this type of meta­phys­i­cal analy­sis as a col­lege stu­dent but they cer­tain­ly do have the cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty to use this type of crit­i­cal think­ing to expand their think­ing process­es. So what is meant by Ëœcrit­i­cal think­ing” exact­ly? The Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tions Com­mit­tee on Pre-Col­lege Phi­los­o­phy describes it as pur­pose­ful, self-reg­u­la­to­ry judg­ment which results in inter­pre­ta­tion, analy­sis, eval­u­a­tion, and infer­ence, as well as expla­na­tion of the evi­den­tial, con­cep­tu­al, method­olog­i­cal, cri­te­ri­o­log­i­cal, or con­tex­tu­al con­sid­er­a­tions upon which that judg­ment is based (Facione 1989)

But for those of us look­ing for a sim­pler expla­na­tion it is essen­tial­ly the abil­i­ty to use rea­son­ably reflec­tive, focused think­ing to decide what to believe and do. Chil­dren need to be encour­aged to reflect care­ful­ly on their own beliefs and be encour­aged to explore oth­er points of view. Phi­los­o­phy encour­ages chil­dren to learn to think inde­pen­dent­ly as well as think and dis­cuss with oth­ers. In order to gain the most advan­tage chil­dren need to be able to engage in open class­room dis­cus­sions on an ongo­ing basis. By mas­ter­ing this type of think­ing the child devel­ops deep­er emo­tion­al lit­er­a­cy and learns to cre­ate a more thought­ful and pur­pose­ful life.

On anoth­er lev­el philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion can be used to devel­op a deep­er under­stand­ing of ethics. Dr. Stephen Law, a senior lec­tur­er in Phi­los­o­phy at Heathrop Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don explains the skills that are cul­ti­vat­ed in such dis­cus­sions as the following:

* reveal and ques­tion under­ly­ing assumptions
* fig­ure out the per­haps unfore­seen con­se­quences of a moral deci­sion or point of view
* spot and diag­nose faulty reasoning
* weigh up evi­dence fair­ly and impartially
* make a point clear­ly and concisely
* take turns in a debate, and lis­ten atten­tive­ly with­out interrupting
* argue with­out per­son­al­iz­ing a dispute
* look at issues from the point of view of others
* ques­tion the appro­pri­ate­ness, or the appro­pri­ate­ness of act­ing on, one’s own feelings

He goes on to say, “Acquir­ing these skills involves devel­op­ing, not just a lev­el of intel­lec­tu­al matu­ri­ty, but a fair degree of emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty too. For exam­ple, turn-tak­ing requires patience and self-con­trol. Judg­ing impar­tial­ly involves iden­ti­fy­ing and tak­ing account of your own emo­tion­al bias­es. By think­ing crit­i­cal­ly and care­ful­ly about your own beliefs and atti­tudes, you may devel­op insights into your own char­ac­ter. By step­ping out­side of your own view­point and look­ing at issues from the stand­point of anoth­er, you can devel­op a greater empa­thy with and under­stand­ing of oth­ers. So by engag­ing in this kind of philo­soph­i­cal, crit­i­cal activ­i­ty, you are like­ly to devel­op, not only the abil­i­ty to rea­son cogent­ly, but also what now tends to be called “emo­tion­al intel­li­gence.” (Law 2007)

In order to gain the most advan­tage, chil­dren need to be able to engage in open class­room dis­cus­sions on an ongo­ing basis. As a teacher of pre-ado­les­cent chil­dren I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness these dis­cus­sions tak­ing place spon­ta­neous­ly. In most instances I have been able to set aside the par­tic­u­lar les­son that might have been planned for the time and let the free-wheel­ing philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion go on with min­i­mal but well-timed guid­ance. Although it would have been ide­al to have had time set aside on a dai­ly basis for such dis­cus­sion there is a fair amount of pres­sure from the already demand­ing cur­ricu­lum, there­by restrict­ing the fre­quen­cy of these crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant discussions.

As a writer of phi­los­o­phy for chil­dren, I give exam­ples with­in my sto­ries of my char­ac­ters explor­ing deep philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions in an alter­nate school set­ting as well as in every day events. It is my hope that when chil­dren read my sto­ries they will have a sparked inter­est in explor­ing the deep­er ques­tions of life with their fam­i­lies and per­haps even insti­gate such dis­cus­sions with­in their class­rooms. I also have great hope that the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tems cur­rent­ly in place will take a clos­er look at the ben­e­fit of adding philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions to their cur­ricu­lums. This would pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to advance the world’s devel­op­ment by pop­u­lat­ing it with emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent and crit­i­cal­ly inquis­i­tive minds.

– Kim­ber­ly Wick­ham is the author of Angels and Hors­es and Sum­mer of Mag­ic Horses.