This is an edited version of an interview that first appeared in Teaching Thinking and Creativity Magazine, Issue 15, Winter 2004
Julie:So how did a philosophy professor get hooked on education from Kindergarten through the grades?
Mat: It was after the riots in Colombia. I reckoned that if students began philosophical thinking at eleven or twelve, they would become much more reasonable as students and as adults. Also, I used to teach Sunday School at the Unitarian Universalist Church my first wife and I went to. She thought I ought to do something so I started to teach the Grade 3 children. We played games, made constructions and I told stories.
Julie: Could this have sown the seeds of the philosophy for children novels?
Mat: Well I guess so but I hadnt thought of it in that way before!
[Matthew Lipman is eighty, soon to be eighty one, and looks remarkably fit for a man of his years. He greeted me on a cold morning with: Can I make you a tea or coffee? Boy your hands are cold! After we shook hands, he rubbed my right hand between his hands in a most concerned manner — not quite the image I had of such a revered academic. While he boiled the water, I took the opportunity to look round his office.
The IAPC (Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children) is housed in a wooden building painted olive green. The interior reflects the rather quaint exterior view. Mats office is lined with bookshelves filled with his own books and novels and those of philosophers through the ages! He made hot water for me (I supplied the fruit tea bag!) and coffee for him and then we sat and shared thoughts and ideas about P4C for a good three and a half hours.]
Mat: Children can be original! In the community of enquiry children can be creative and sociable with ideas. It is an environment where they dont just converse like volleying before a tennis game! They start to develop roles within the community of enquiry. Some children will raise questions, others will look for connections relationships between ideas. They will start to depend more on one another. You will see an interdependence developing.
Julie: I havent seen this as yet amongst my whole class but there are pairs who are beginning to challenge each other. Even more exciting, they continue the community of enquiry in the back of one of their parents cars. One parent told me it was like listening to much older people debating and setting the world to rights!
Mat: There are set stages in the development of the community of enquiry in the classroom. First you read the story or poem round the group and then you call for questions. These are based on something puzzling or problematic, something mysterious that the child wants to explore. If, of course, they dont see anything problematic youre probably on to a dead duck! However when you get the questions, write them on the board with the childs name beside them. The next step is to ask the child to clarify, explain exactly what their question means so everyone in the group can understand. Philosophy is about meaning. Science is about truth. As they explain their question the teacher can ask, Does this question move the enquiry along? How could it be re-phrased? Then the children can vote for the question they like best or the child who has not offered a question could be asked to choose a question to start the discussion.
Julie: How can I help the children to develop the range of vocabulary they are beginning to need to be successful at communicating meaning in a discussion.
Mat: It is very interesting that you should ask this because it is an area we are currently researching here. I remember teaching a group where we were discussing war within the community of enquiry and one girl (the children were between nine and ten years old) was looking for a word, in fact agonizing for a word, then she suddenly came out with unthinkable and the relief on her face was amazing! I can imagine her going home and telling her parents this word and the context in which she thought of it. Parents need context to understand important moments in their childs learning and, when the context is such a powerful one, that child will remember that moment for a long time!
Julie: Are there ways to develop the thinking vocabulary of pupils?
Mat:I think ideas banks are good for developing vocabulary. The teacher can keep a glossary and/or make lists of the words that come up within the community of enquiry and these can be added to. Also the teacher can introduce new words to help the children. You could have imaginative or inventive words or emotional words.
Julie: Children seem to pick up the terms agree and disagree within our community of enquiry.
Mat: This is universal! It is a feature of philosophy for children that they learn the vocabulary of discourse and it happens in every country where the programme is introduced.
Julie: Children in my teaching group have also got better at remembering what each other has said.
Mat: This is also a feature of how children develop within the community of enquiry. It amazes me how they are able to keep track of several different ideas at the same time and suddenly come up with a response to an idea that was given much earlier in the discussion. The teacher certainly cant often keep track like this!
Julie: What age children begin to take part in philosophy.
Mat: We have recently been working with kindergarten children from three to five years old. I would never have thought this was possible! They need a different approach because you cant expect very young children to sit down in one place for a long time! In fact they get up walk around the room a few times and then come back to the group with another point they want to make!
Julie: What topics can be introduced with this age group?
Mat: Children are fascinated by names. Names are wonders for them. They have an emotional response to names; they are a type of symbol a sort of iconography. Finding out who they are and how their name relates to them as a person needs exploration.
New materials
New materials Mat shared with me the new materials, yet to be published, edited by him and Scottish teacher, Chloe Ogden, and developed by teachers from Taiwan, Korea, Ukraine and Iceland. The title of the book is Thinking Trees and Laughing Cats. We shared one of the stories he has contributed: How Jim Got His Name. I read the story aloud Has Jim got his name:
There was once a boy named Jim who told everyone that his name was Alexander. His family called him Jim, his teacher called him Jim and his friends called him Jim, but he insisted that his name was Alexander.
One day the teacher announced a contest. Whoever wrote the best story would win a prize. And what was the prize? It was the name Alexander. Naturally everyone hurried to tell Jim the wonderful news. But Jim refused to get excited. I already have the name Alexander, he said, Why would I want two of them?
Just the same he entered the contest and he won. So now he calls himself Alexander Alexander, and everyone else calls him Jim Alexander. Except his parents. They call him Jim Jim. (This extract is used with the permission of the author: Copyright 2003). We both laughed about this story and Mat shared some of the ideas for questions and games to play using this story. For example:
- Questions we can ask . We ask questions about the story. We answer each others questions.
- Questions our teacher can ask. Do all children around the world like their names? Do all children have nicknames?
- Games we can play. We go around the group and say: If I had two first names I would be called because
- We make up a story to show what we mean. We make a list of reasons for why Jim prefers the name Alexander. We make up and tell a story about how Jim came to prefer the name Alexander.
These are just a few of the ideas included and they illustrate how easily the youngest children could be engaged by this story and how readily they would be inspired to talk about their thinking.
Another very exciting development related to these stories is that, for the first time, they include a progression in philosophical skills: We Think About Our Own Thinking And Imagination. The stories are also cross referenced to the State of New Jersey Standards. I found this very interesting and could see that both could readily relate to our Early Learning Goals and beyond into National Curriculum Statements of Attainment.
Mat is also keen to say that P4C is a bridge between adults and children: philosophy for children has to appeal to the adult and childs level at the same time. It has to be legitimately interesting to both so that both are engaged within the community of enquiry.
With this in mind he gave me something to try out with my teaching group when I returned to school: There is an amazing Shaker poem called Simple Gifts which has been set to music by Aaron Copeland. Read the poem with the children and get them to think about what questions, puzzles, mysteries and problems it raises for them.
References
Lipman, M. Thinking in Education, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, 2003
Gaarder, J. Sophies World, Orion Childrens, 1995
