Philosophy for children

• Main Author: Lipman, M.
• Other Authors: Bernard van Leer Foundation
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: children; aid programmes; participation; evaluation; Culture; Society and Religion; Iceland
• Online Access: http://www.search4dev.nl/record/294127

Are young children really capable of making any kind of profound contribution to areas such as the conceptualisation and evaluation of early childhood development (ECD) programmes? Do they have the powers of investigation, perception, reflection and analysis that seem necessary? Can their obvious creativity be employed usefully? Dr Matthew Lipman believes that the answer to questions like these is ‘Yes!’ and, for the last 25 years, he has been showing how these capacities and powers can be developed. Lipman therefore produced the ‘Philosophy for Children’ programme, designed to help children from preschool age upwards to engage in critical enquiry, and creative and caring thinking. The programme emphasises the excitement of discovery, reflection and analysis through helping the children to create what he calls ‘a community of enquiry’ that allows children to explore and better understand their world, other people, and themselves. The examples that follow show how it has been implemented, and with what results, with three to six year olds in Iceland and among six year olds in the USA.