2nd Global Conference
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Thursday 14th July - Saturday 16th July
2005
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers
Session 2: Engagement with People,
Process and Problematic Thought
Chair: Jones Irwin
Reconstruction in Philosophy for Children
Jennifer
Bleazby
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Mathew Lipman’s
Philosophy for Children program (hereafter P4C) problematically excludes
practicality. By practicality I mean the testing and application of
ideas and methods in real situations. Mathew Lipman agrees with John
Dewey’s argument
that meaning is constructed through testing and applying ideas, and
thus all thinking involves practicality. Since the P4C classroom
excludes practicality, it can’t properly facilitate the meaningful
learning and the reflective, caring, creative and critical thinking
that it claims to.
In this paper I intend to offer a solution to P4C’s
problematic lack of practicality. I believe this problem derives from
the fact that P4C unintentionally incorporates a notion of philosophy
that is theoretical, abstract and unconnected to everyday, concrete
experience. Thus, I recommend that P4C embrace the Deweyian ideal
of philosophy, which conceives of philosophical inquiry as grounded
in real social problems. If P4C embraced this ideal of philosophy,
then the P4C classroom would involve an analysis of actual social
problems and the construction and application of real solutions. My
intention here is to outline what such a Practical P4C Program might
look like.
While many mainstream service learning practices are inappropriate
for P4C because they don’t facilitate critical, creative and
caring thinking, I prescribe that P4C adopt the type of service learning
that Kahne and Westheimer describe, which emphasizes social change.
I will refer to this as social reconstruction learning in
order to distinguish it from other service learning practices. Social
reconstruction learning involves the identification of social problems
in order to develop and implement real solutions to them. As such,
it resembles Dewey’s notion of communal inquiry, which is the
means to reconstructing problematic situations into meaningful experiences.
Since the Deweyian ideal of communal inquiry is the model for the reflective,
caring, critical and creative thinking that P4C aims to facilitate,
social reconstruction learning can enhance P4C’s ability to fulfil
its educational goals. Furthermore, P4C’s pedagogy and content
have been specifically designed so as to facilitate the Deweyian ideal
of communal inquiry, which is also the means to social reconstruction.
Thus, P4C can significantly improve social reconstruction learning.
Philosophy and the Problem of the Pupils Socialization
Gagik
Galikyan
Yerevan , Armenia
The problem of directed socialization of pupils is
that the basic norms and values taught at school for raising comprehensive,
tolerant and responsible individuals collide with reality in the process
of adaptation to the society. Collision of high expectations and ideas
with social reality in the pupils conscience as rule leads to nihilism
or cynicism. Humanitarian disciplines are perceived rather as a scope
of knowledge, which might be necessary to know though it is absolutely
impossible to take seriously for practical life. The extreme form of
this approach is antisocial behavior. Lack of confidence that whatever
happens depends to some degree on individual position and could be
changed or improved if necessary turns
the pupils at best to conformists.
Philosophy is the field of knowledge
introducing the value relation to reality and its importance is not
in just acquainting the pupils to this or that development in social
or moral philosophy. Its major role is that the pupils’ social
impulses are shaped and framed namely through philosophy, i.e. considering
the value approach.
The school provides a unique opportunity of understanding
and evaluating an individual position based on concerned and honest
criticism of the classmates. Such a reflexive model considers the education
rather as an inquiry. Through the discussion involving all classmates
one may pass from passive acceptance of the situation to critical understanding
of what has been earlier taken as granted.
In school curriculum the
objectives and values shaped and defined in the process of socialization
are pushed into the private sphere and to the sphere of private conversations.
So pulling this private out to class discussion is the first precondition
of the socialization process. “Philosophy for Children” provides
an opportunity of developing skills and doing whatever possible for
reaching the objective persuasiveness in the realization of a situation
when I can reasonably understand that the others see the things similarly.
Philosophy
classes provide a real opportunity for pupils to understand that values
and objectives are not just introduced from the outside but are developed
and realized in certain social contexts. How should the society and
institutions act in the light of the above-mentioned for ensuring not
just the ritual entrance of the youth into the life but for finding
in that very life exemplary models to follow?
From Socrates to Lipman: Making Philosophy Relevant
Gilbert
Burgh
Contemporary Studies Program, The University of Queensland, Australia
There
is a widespread view that philosophical thinking has no application
to matters pertaining to the “real world.” It follows from
such reasoning that if the purpose of education is to prepare students
for the real world, then philosophy has no place in schools or university
courses, and by implication in everyday life. One of the aims of
this paper is to illustrate that the reasoning behind this view is
mistaken. The ability to think critically and creatively through philosophical
inquiry provides an intellectual context for study and discussion
of issues related to all areas of study. The guiding idea that informs
the practice advocated in this paper is that doing philosophy,
as distinct from learning about philosophy, helps us to understand
the way in which we reason about the world, make decisions, and ultimately
how we should live in it.
But the introduction of philosophy into
the classroom is not without its critics. This paper, therefore,
explores a major accusation aimed at philosophy, i.e., that it is
necessarily adversarial. Janice Moulton (1983) argues that the Socratic
Method has been confused with the adversarial method which is “part
of the larger paradigm that distinguishes reason from emotion, and
segregates philosophy from literature, aligning it with science …” (p.163).
The adversarial method tends to prioritise the logical structure
of the argument over the plausibility of the claims or meaningfulness
of the argument when viewed in a larger context.
The final section
of the paper argues that Lipman’s approach
to philosophical inquiry offers much to remedy the more adversarial
and limiting elements of the Western philosophical tradition. It is
clear that we should not simply aim to reproduce traditional methods
of doing philosophy in the classroom. The community of inquiry is an
illustration of a positive direction in respect to participation,
relatedness and relevance to those involved.