1st Global Conference
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Friday 10th September - Sunday 12th September 2004
Mansfield College, Oxford
Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers
Session
2 – Stories, Narratives and Imagination
Chair: Thomas Wartenberg
The Folkoric Approach
Marc Bobro
University of Southern Indiana, Indiana, USA
I want to propose what I call
the Folkloric Approach to Philosophy with Children. For several years, I
have had success introducing philosophy to children through the discussion
of folk tales. Sometimes the tales are simple, but they are never contrived.
Many folktales represent an attempt to distill wisdom, a summation
of ideas and insights that have remained relevant over time. By exploring
the ideas of different cultures, children are exposed directly to a
variety of philosophical traditions.
We find realistic stories of humans
interacting with animals, sages considering discrepancies in nature,
and families resisting temptation. We also find fantastic stories involving
heroes and heroines, impossible quests, and transformations from human
to beast to bird. Folklore is rife with compelling thought experiments.
The ideas have stood the test of time, otherwise they would not have
been told and retold—they
would not have survived. Children respond eagerly and creatively to
thought experiments. An important part of childhood is asking "what
if" and using imagination to ponder various ideas and scenarios.
There are a number of folktales from around the world that can properly
be called philosophical, including a somber Italian folktale that gives
an intriguing perspective on death and the afterlife, a hilarious Georgian
tale that seems to parody naturalistic arguments for God's existence,
several African "dilemma" tales that address justice and
personhood, and a fantastic Russian tale that concerns predestination
or fate.
So instead of the current convention of inventing original
philosophical stories for children—stories about fictional children
who discover how to reason more effectively—perhaps we should
focus on the stories handed down from generation to generation.
(In
addition to exploring some philosophical folktales, I will address
the following: locating philosophical folktales, using folktales in
a philosophy class for children, and responding to these tales.)
Dat is waar
Menno Lievers
Department of Philosophy,
Utrecht University,
The Netherlands
In 2003 I published
a book in Dutch, entitled Dat is waar (That is true)
intended for children of the age of between ten and twelve. In that
book I have tried to introduce in a fictional setting 23 main philosophical
problems, such as meaning, theories of truth, personal identity,
explanation versus understanding, the inner and the outer, pain,
know how versus knowledge that, the golden rule in ethics, the nature
of time. After publication I have traveled all over the country
to visit elementary schools and I have discussed these problems with
groups of children, sometimes accompanied by their parents.
In the second part of the paper I want to
describe my experiences with children, their reaction to the chapters
and the problems I confront them with and I ant to contrast those
with the responses given by their parents and the reviewers of my
book.