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:

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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.

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