TY - JOUR
T1 - Doing philosophy with young children
T2 - theory, practice, and resources
AU - Kennedy, David
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The last half-century has seen a slow, tentative change in adult attitudes about young children’s capacity to think abstractly. Parents and teachers know the young child as a dramatic mixture of the concrete, sense-bound, and the transcendent, and it is just that mixture, cultivated and pursued, which makes for philosophy. Young children’s capacity for wonder runs through all their discourse, but their speculation tends to fall on the thematic categories of appearance and reality, identity and continuity, permanence growth and transformation, ‘ultimate questions’ such as death and deity, and epistemological issues (how do I/you know that?). While play and story are the primary languages of early childhood, communal philosophical discussion introduces the child to a new one, which demands new skills: listening carefully to another’s statement, waiting to speak, formulating a response which takes another’s statement into account, staying on the subject, and giving reasons for judgements. The leader of young children’s philosophical discussions is model, encourager, and sometimes enforcer of fundamental rules (not interrupting, keeping at least generally on the subject, etc.), and an interpreter of children to each other, for often a young child has a significant thought, but can communicate it only elliptically or partially. Teacher resources include, not just the stories and discussion plans of the Philosophy for Children curriculum, but numerous picture books for children that suggest philosophical concepts, as well as concrete ‘object lessons’ designed to spark group dialogue.
AB - The last half-century has seen a slow, tentative change in adult attitudes about young children’s capacity to think abstractly. Parents and teachers know the young child as a dramatic mixture of the concrete, sense-bound, and the transcendent, and it is just that mixture, cultivated and pursued, which makes for philosophy. Young children’s capacity for wonder runs through all their discourse, but their speculation tends to fall on the thematic categories of appearance and reality, identity and continuity, permanence growth and transformation, ‘ultimate questions’ such as death and deity, and epistemological issues (how do I/you know that?). While play and story are the primary languages of early childhood, communal philosophical discussion introduces the child to a new one, which demands new skills: listening carefully to another’s statement, waiting to speak, formulating a response which takes another’s statement into account, staying on the subject, and giving reasons for judgements. The leader of young children’s philosophical discussions is model, encourager, and sometimes enforcer of fundamental rules (not interrupting, keeping at least generally on the subject, etc.), and an interpreter of children to each other, for often a young child has a significant thought, but can communicate it only elliptically or partially. Teacher resources include, not just the stories and discussion plans of the Philosophy for Children curriculum, but numerous picture books for children that suggest philosophical concepts, as well as concrete ‘object lessons’ designed to spark group dialogue.
KW - Philosophy for children
KW - community of philosophical inquiry
KW - young children’s thinking
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082475084&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03004430.2020.1743699
DO - 10.1080/03004430.2020.1743699
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85082475084
SN - 0300-4430
VL - 192
SP - 124
EP - 135
JO - Early Child Development and Care
JF - Early Child Development and Care
IS - 1
ER -