Feeling the pea beneath the mattresses: philosophy with children as

ESRC Seminar at Birkbeck College, University of London – 21st October, 2011Generating alternative discourses of childhood as a resource for educational policymaking

'Feeling the Pea beneath the mattresses: philosophising with children as imaginative, critical practice' (paper in progress)

Joanna HaynesAcknowledgement: I have been involved in close collaboration with my colleague and friend Karin Murris (now at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) since 1994. This paper reflects our collaboration in research and writing in the field of philosophy with children.

Abstract

This paper draws on experiences of philosophizing with children and related scholarship and professional development activity with educators, over a period of nearly twenty years. I provide some background on the development of philosophy for children (P4C) over the last forty years. I introduce ideas to associate with alternative discourses of child as ‘headlines’, emergent within P4C literature, and explore the possibility of P4C as an imaginative critical pedagogy, for children and adults alike. My individual and collaborative work with Karin Murris focuses on concerns arising from our own critical and reflexive practice such as: opening the philosophical space in classrooms through children’s literature, particularly picturebooks (Haynes and Murris, 2009); questioning censorship, calling for greater freedom of thought for children and respect for their authority to speak of what they know (Haynes and Murris, 2009; 2012); reflecting on what it might mean to listen to child in a philosophical way, in the context of compulsory schooling (Haynes, 2007; 2008; Haynes and Murris, 2012). Together we have initiated a conversation proposing an epistemological shift in teacher education and continuing professional development for educators (Haynes and Murris, 2011a, 2011b).

Introduction: the trouble with P4C

Theories and practices of philosophy for and with children (P4C) have grown in significance since the 1970s, particularly in Latin America, Europe and the UK. The Philosophy for Children programme, originated in the USA (Lipman et al 1980), has given birth to many offspring, and to various interpretations of childhood and child. This work has produced a substantial body of empirical research on its educational impact, a range of distinctive pedagogies and the emergent academic field of philosophy of childhood. P4C has caused a stir among educationalists and academic philosophers alike. The practical and scholarly work associated with P4C in the last forty years has much to contribute to the generation of alternative multi-disciplinary discourses of childhood/child, not least through the ‘trouble’ it has stirred up (Haynes and Murris, 2009; 2011).

Dr Joanna Haynes, School of Education, Faculty of Health, Education and Society, Plymouth University. [email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]


Some scholars have argued that ‘real’ philosophy is too difficult for young children (Kitchener, 1990; White, 1992; Wilson, 1992).1 It has been lumped together with other shallow ‘innovations’ and dismissed as dangerously therapeutic in orientation by Ecclestone and Hayes, (2009)2. Some question the integrity of P4C practice, suggesting that its educational aims become narrowly instrumental, when classroom philosophy is focused on skills and dispositions desirable for the production of ‘reasonable’ future citizens, for example (Biesta, 2009); or that it rests on limiting and potentially oppressive views of rationality, when its focus is on developing certain modes of reasoning in children (Vansieleghem, 2005).

What P4C is – philosophy for and with children (and adults)

‘P4C world’ includes a wide mix of educational and philosophical ideas and embraces a variety of practices worldwide. Practitioners in different settings situate the approach in their own contexts, infusing practice with their values, beliefs and identities. Whilst these approaches might loosely resemble each other, we can say that, in a profound sense, what P4C is can be experienced only in practice (Haynes & Murris, 2012:8; 56-68). Critics have sometimes based arguments on one or two examples of P4C practice without giving any consideration to the diversity of approaches and the wider literature.3

Originated by philosopher Matthew Lipman (1922-2010) in the USA in the late 1960s and 1970s, philosophy for children had a clear practical goal of establishing philosophy as part of the curriculum of public schools, as well as the wider aim of exploring the relationship between ‘philosophy’ and ‘childhood.’ Lipman and others produced curriculum material consisting of specially constructed philosophical novels with teacher manuals, each designed for a specific age group. The novels raise classical philosophical ideas and themes. The Philosophy for Children programme is designed to teach children a reconstructed body of philosophical knowledge4.

Quite apart from philosophy for children as proposed by Lipman and others, the idea of including philosophy as a subject in the school curriculum is growing in popularity, as shown in a recent letter from many well known academic philosophers to the Guardian newspaper (September, 2011), and in a collection of essays edited by 1 For responses to these particular critiques see Murris (1993; 1994 and 2000)

2 These challenges were taken up at a symposium held at Philosophy of Education Society conference in Oxford in 2008 on ‘What philosophy for children is not’. See also Haynes and Murris (2012) chapter 12.

3 For example Ecclestone and Hayes (2009) base their thin chapter casting P4C as a therapeutic approach on one short extract of dialogue from one classroom and one statement on a website. John White based a recent paper YP4C? What is Philosophy for Children for? delivered at a seminar at the Institute of Education, London, on 25 th May, 2011, on observations of one session in one classroom.4 For detailed discussion of this programme see Chapter 3 of Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy by Haynes and Murris (2012).


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Michael Hand and Carrie Winstanley (2008). These suggestions rest on arguments that philosophy has something unique to offer young people, in terms of their individual development, and in providing tools for thinking about and solving real problems in the world. Writers in this volume challenge the idea that philosophy is too difficult or abstract for children and sometimes hint at the idea of philosophy in the school curriculum as a kind of right or entitlement.

P4C is quite unique in terms of its teaching approach and is not taught like other subjects in the school curriculum. Lipman and his colleagues at the Institute for Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) at Montclair State University in New Jersey devised a distinctive pedagogy to actively realize the possibility of engaging children with the ideas and themes in the novels. A defining feature of this pedagogy is the classroom ‘community of enquiry’. This ‘ideal’ of learning through philosophical questioning and shared dialogue proposes a practical method of working in classrooms. It posits knowledge as provisional and engenders critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinking (Splitter and Sharp, 1995). The community of enquiry methodology of experimenting with ideas5 is a crucial dimension of P4C practice. It positions children as ‘co-enquirers’, and teachers as ‘facilitators’, in the open-ended philosophical dialogue. This pedagogy is very much at odds with the dominant metaphor of teaching as ‘delivery’, which emphasizes instruction and still seems to position the child as receiver, and her/his mind as a container to be filled6.

The work of the IAPC was first shown in the UK through the BBC’s television screening of Socrates for Six Year Olds as part of a series about transformative approaches to education (The Transformers, 1990). During this programme Lipman suggested that if schooling were based on thinking, rather than rote learning, that we would be looking at a radically different world. The image of Matthew Lipman making these comments is particularly striking today, as the film then cuts to images of New York City horizon and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

In many countries, the IAPC programme has been translated and/or adapted and continues to be used in primary and secondary schools. In other countries similar materials have been produced: often collections of stories, poems or images featuring implicit philosophical puzzles and dilemmas, with sets of questions, exercises and suggestions for teachers to use in classrooms. In the UK, philosophy for children practice is quite diverse, in terms of both resources adopted to prompt philosophical questioning and dialogue and in terms of underlying pedagogy: the degree of emphasis on developing children’s ‘thinking skills’ or on creating

5 Lipman was strongly influenced by the educational philosophy of John Dewey.

6 This metaphor of delivery seems to dominate in policy documents and in the language used by many teachers. Teaching informed by ideas about knowledge as co-construction and based on research on dialogical teaching carried out by researchers such as Robin Alexander (see for example the 2009 Cambridge Review of Primary Education , and evidenced in studies collected by the ESRC funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme led by Andrew Pollard (www.tlrp.co.uk)seem to exist in a parallel world.


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‘communities of thinking persons’. These choices by practitioners tend to express what Kennedy (2006:155) has called the ‘psychic economy’ of adult: internal dialogues about constructs of adult and child, adult-child relationships and the encounter between child and philosophy.7

A critical moment in the story of P4C in the UK (also taken up by practitioners in other countries too) was the introduction of philosophy through picturebooks, pioneered by Karin Murris (1992)8. Drawing on her knowledge of children’s literature and philosophy, Karin Murris offered certain carefully chosen picturebooks as an alternative to material designed along developmental lines and written specifically for teaching philosophy in schools. Although not only intended as philosophical texts for younger children, the introduction of picturebooks proved particularly popular with primary school teachers, as they were often already used in classrooms and regarded as more ‘child friendly’. Teachers could see how exploratory talk with children could be extended through the kinds of philosophical questions Murris included in her manual for teachers (1992). Such questions provided for playful and imaginative dialogues, illustrated by transcripts from Murris’ own work with children. This project moved away from a sequential model of philosophical topics and questions. It also showed that much younger children could enjoy philosophizing, when approached playfully and imaginatively, and when adults were prepared to take their thinking seriously. Philosophizing with children became associated in some quarters with a wider ethical concern with listening to children’s voices in classrooms (Haynes, 2002).

During this period, a growing number of empirical studies carried out in schools examined the impact of using philosophical texts9 in the context of the participatory methodology of the community of enquiry. These revealed positive effects on children’s reasoning ‘skills’, intelligence, self-esteem, speaking, listening, reading and wider academic attainment10. They suggested that children’s capacities for thinking and reasoning together were often more sophisticated than teachers expected them to be. Moreover, regular opportunities to engage in philosophical dialogues together changed children’s intellectual, social and emotional lives at school, making space for them to tackle and resolve everyday questions and situations beyond the sessions of philosophical enquiry facilitated by teachers. This suggested that ways of thinking and talking being developed in the classroom community of enquiry were being

7 For further elaboration see Reimagining School, Chapter 5 of ‘The Well of Being: Childhood, Subjectivity and Education’ by David Kennedy (2006).

8 See also Storywise: Thinking through Stories (Murris, K. and Haynes, J. 2002; 2010)

9 I am using the word ‘text’ here in the broadest sense of the word – including words, images, objects or actions used to provoke philosophical questioning.

10 For a review of the research and example of an authority wide study of the impact of one P4C programme see Trickey and Topping’s papers published in 2004 and 2007.


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internalized and applied elsewhere. Children often reported ‘using’ philosophy in their everyday lives (see for example Haynes, 2002/2008).

In many areas of the UK, P4C began to be adopted widely as a ‘vehicle’ to achieve other ends, such as improving behavior, implementing the personal and social education curriculum, teaching citizenship. One factor impacting on the introduction of P4C into schools is the difficulty of providing funded or accredited professional development courses without piggy-backing on central policy agendas. P4C is indeed ‘sold’ on the back of ‘raising achievement’, ‘improving self-esteem’ or ‘developing emotional intelligence’. In the UK, training of teachers to facilitate P4C, and the ‘desirable competences’ of such trainers, have been the subject of intense debate.

There is some poor practice passing as philosophy for children that is no more than disconnected thinking ‘games’ and an airing of opinions. Philosophy for children is not the same as circle time11, a practice to which it has sometimes been compared in primary school contexts. In P4C, children collaborate, not towards unanimity, but towards shedding light from many different angles on a particular question. The drive is towards truth seeking, rather than towards resolution and convergence of opinion. The impoverishment of teacher education is a contributory factor in teachers’ lack of familiarity with philosophical ideas, whilst the reduction in professional autonomy is sometimes matched by a corresponding reduction in teachers’ willingness and confidence to engage in deep questioning and critical thinking.

The growing popularity of P4C has also contributed to a widening of access to philosophical ideas among adults, as educators have spread these ideas. Versions of the community of enquiry have been adopted in many informal settings by groups of adults meeting in pubs, clubs, schools and inter-generational contexts, such as village halls and residential homes for the elderly. This popularization of philosophical enquiry has been driven by a certain hunger for thinking beyond the ‘given’, by technology making philosophical works more widely available and accessible, as well as the ‘novelty’ of P4C helping to bring philosophy to wider public attention.

Interpretations of child and perspectives on childhood in P4C

Against the backdrop of increasing numbers of school children taking part in P4C, a growing number of scholars, in education and philosophy, have been developing ideas in pedagogy and philosophy of childhood.

11 In circle time, the emphasis is on building effective communication and good relationships in the class and providing a forum in which problems can be tackled constructively. Circle time practice includes pro-social games and activities.


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A recent editorial to a special edition of the Journal of Philosophy of Education draws attention to the work of Stephan Englhart on models and perspectives of P4C (1997, cited in Vansieleghem and Kennedy, 2011:172). This account proposes three ways in which philosophy for children created new interests and questions for educators and philosophers, beginning in the 1970s. The first was Lipman’s programme, outlined in the preceding section, based on a certain view of developing critical thinking in young minds, influenced by Dewey’s educational philosophy. Lipman was among a number of people proposing the need to stimulate communal critical thinking and dialogue, as a means of educational renewal in schools and universities12.

Enabled by Lipman, philosopher Gareth Matthews’ work prepared the ground for the emergent field of philosophy of childhood – a second horizon: closing the gap between adult and child. Matthews’ book Philosophy and the Young Child (1980) invited appreciation for children’s seemingly inherent sense of wonder. His writing emphasised ‘the need to rethink the child, not as an ignorant being, but as a rational agent who already has the capacity to reason philosophically’ (ibid: 172).

The third approach, argue Vansieleghem and Kennedy, perceived P4C as a means to reconfigure relations of authority and agency in school settings, to enable children’s reflective thinking and communication, with the aim of ‘facilitating the self-actualisation of conscious moral actors’ (ibid:173). Having elaborated on these three strands of interest, Vansieleghem and Kennedy suggest that a ‘second generation’ of P4Cers are developing the discourse of philosophy for/with children, taking into account the changing educational and philosophical environment (ibid:177). My own work, and that of Karin Murris, is positioned by Vansieleghem and Kennedy as being within this ‘second generation’.

The work of ‘first generation’ P4Cers certainly paved the way to challenge ideas about the aims of education, children’s capacities for rationality and agency in their lives and for relations between child and adult, both in the classroom and beyond. The practice of philosophy for children has created questions about constructs of knowledge and these are often deeply problematic in the context of compulsory schooling. I’ll dwell only briefly on the moments of P4C that have opened up, or helped to fuel, some emerging discourses of childhood, philosophy and education. It is not possible to do justice here to the scope or complexity of ideas that have contributed to alternative discourses of child and childhood but perhaps just to suggest some ‘headlines’.

Philosophy a natural activity? Children ‘natural’ philosophers?

12 For further details see Vansielghem and Kennedy, as well as the other contributions, in the recent special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (2011, 45(2).


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As a father in conversations with his young children, philosopher Gareth Matthews noticed his six year old daughter’s capacities for philosophical thinking. The bedtime stories he read to his three year old son raised philosophical issues that he was discussing with students in his university philosophy classes. Becoming more aware of the philosophical nature of some children’s literature, he used these stories with his university classes to convince them of his view that philosophy is a natural, spontaneous and universal human activity. This is closely connected to the notion that philosophical questioning begins from a sense of puzzlement about the world and the widespread observation that children are disposed to curiosity and wonder, by virtue of their recent arrival into the world. Thus child is constructed as a ‘natural’ philosopher. Such observations have been made not only in some family or social settings but in many early childhood settings too. Several accounts and analyses of young children asking philosophical questions and engaging with philosophy in educational contexts have been published. Murris’ work on picturebooks (1992) underlines the significance of narrative framing for such explorations, not only as a way of widening access to philosophical conversations for children, but also to propose connections between philosophical thinking and narrative forms of understanding.

Writing about child and childhood in P4C comes close to naturalism at times, stressing children’s capacity to question and come as ‘strangers to the world’ with a unique kind of imaginative energy to bring to philosophical thinking. There are certainly risks associated with casting philosophising as an essential characteristic of children. Many teachers are drawn to P4C out of a desire to capitalise on qualities they associate with ‘being child’ and to re-create this philosophical dimension in the classroom.

Such claims do not have to be regarded as oppressively normalising of child or essentialist with regard to childhood if we accept that such a sense of wonder can only flourish in certain social and cultural conditions, and that philosophical preoccupations permeate many forms of human culture. Recognition of child’s disposition to wonder and ask philosophical questions points to the epistemic advantage of coming new into the world13. It also seems to signal an ethical moment: openness by some adults finding themselves moved to listen more attentively to children’s thinking.

Children’s right to the power of reason: is schooling the problem?

13 The ‘specialness’ of children’s philosophical talk can be overplayed. We have written about the risks and dangers of sentimentality that can also be found in adult responses to children’s philosophising. See for example Haynes & Murris (2012:162-3).


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Early work in P4C also connected with wider debates about the ways in which public schooling diminished many children’s capacities to learn, rather than developing them. P4Cs invitation to children at school to engage in thinking and reasoning is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, by writing material that portrayed young children as thinkers and demonstrating the capacities of children as young as six to engage in abstract thought and philosophical deliberation, both Lipman and Matthews, amongst others, challenged dominant discourses regarding the development of children’s thinking. Widely held beliefs that children, below a certain age, cannot engage in abstract thought, cannot distinguish reality and fantasy, or are egocentric, were contradicted by many classroom dialogues. Analysis suggested that the ability to articulate abstract ideas and reason with others, taking into account alternative perspectives, had far more to do with adult expectations and opportunities, that it did to do with the age of the children or young people involved.

Secondly, the radical proposal that children and young people should take part in philosophical enquiry brought into question not only what should be included in the school curriculum, but also how it should be taught. It suggested that underachievement and poor outcomes could be the result of failing to provide opportunities for thinking and to treat children and young people as thinking persons. Critical thinking had been associated predominantly with elitist schools or with university education. The dialogical pedagogy of P4C showed that critical thinking was possible in large classes and in government funded schools. These ideas tapped into calls for rights to be extended to children and young people: the right to a decent standard of education and to express ideas and beliefs. Lipman certainly argued along these lines, suggesting that if children were involved in philosophising a number of principles were implied:

• Implications for the law resulting from the child’s right and ability to reason• Implications for ethics and moral education from the child’s right and ability to

engage in ethical enquiry• Implications for politics and social life (running of schools) from the child’s

right and ability to participate in communities of enquiryLimpan argued that to affirm children’s right to think philosophically is to assume an education into rationality, responsibility and personhood (Lipman: 1993:143).

It is crucial to engage critically with discourses of rationality and critical thinking that tend to dominate and often to marginalise certain voices. P4C seems to offer very favourable conditions for children to think both imaginatively and critically in classrooms whilst bumping into meta-discourses of epistemology and ethics afforded by philosophical dialogue.


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Child’s being and becoming – against instrumentalism in philosophy with children

The practice of P4C becomes marginalising and instrumental when a certain standard of rationality is imposed and remains uncontested. When it comes to listening to children, Irigeray’s (1996) exploration of the question ‘how am I to listen to you?’ describes the ways in which traditional relationships between adults and children have assumed that:

…the elder is supposed to know what the younger is and what he or she should become. The elder is supposed to know the younger and only listens to him or her within the parameters of an existing science or truth (1996:116).

She argues that the kind of language used by adults within such a construction of relationships results in ‘paralyzing the freedom of the child’s becoming out of a lack of autonomy on the part of adults themselves’ (1996:116).

Vansieleghem (2005) argues that an instrumental approach does not constitute an experience of freedom for children: the emphasis on autonomy and critical thinking is a repetition of a pre-existing discourse, not the creation of a new and inclusive one. The ‘reasonableness’ of discourses between adults and children has to be re-negotiated if it is to be inclusive, expansive and to escape its present confines. An expanded notion of rationality needs to develop in situated contexts of philosophical work with children.

Gert Biesta (2009) suggests instrumentalisation is inherent in claims made by P4C advocates when they speak of its positive impact on reasoning, IQ, or democratic skills. What Biesta wants to draw attention to is an underlying conception of the human being as ‘developing organism’ (p5). The result is that education becomes focused on the production of a particular brand of subjectivity (p6). Biesta proposes instead that a conception of subjectivity ‘in terms of exposure to otherness and difference rather than in terms of the development of skills and dispositions’ could offer alternative ideas for philosophical engagement in education (p10).

Critical moments of choice are often created for teachers when philosophical questions or ‘democratic’ practice ‘bump into’ school rules, action by young people, or controversial topics. The context of compulsory schooling presents rich moments for educators seeking to encourage philosophical dialogue and reflection in classrooms that might have implications beyond the classroom walls.

Philosophy as ‘encounter’


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Echoing critiques of essentialism, developmentality and governmentality within the field of childhood studies and related disciplines (for example Burman, 2008a, 2008b; Walkerdine 1984), Kohan proposes philosophical enquiry as an experience of encounter, an encounter with philosophy and between adult and child. He speaks of philosophy as an unrepeatable experience of thinking arising from ‘the encounter with what forces us to think, with what puts us into doubt, with what takes us out of our conformity, our naturality’ (Kohan 2002:9) There are epistemological and ethical dimensions to such encounters when adults choose whether or not to child (see paragraph that follows) and to engage in more or less reciprocal philosophical interactions with children (Kohan, 2002). Kohan suggests that educators have choices to make in the face of disciplinary pedagogies, however flexible and interactive they claim to be. The effort here is in conceiving of philosophical work with children, not as the giving of form to future persons, but as encounters between subjects in which there is the possibility that I will be influenced. Equally, the project of philosophy itself is transformed through the inclusion of previously excluded voices.

Child and childing - a way of being in the world?

As those involved in P4C have grown and been influenced through experiences of philosophising with children, they are increasingly disposed to question conceptual distinctions and ethical relations between adult and child, drawing on a wider range of philosophical traditions. Education has often tried to fix the question of what a child is, rather than leaving it open. P4C creates the possibility of further experimentation in the space of school. Within the Continental philosophical tradition, we might be more likely to find a question like ‘What does it mean to be a child?’ Such questions are concerned with ways in which so called childlike qualities might shape all human experience. In phenomenology, lived experience is the food of knowledge and understanding: our daily lives, what we read, see, hear, touch and feel, through bodily presence. Bodies carry the memories of lived experience, so childhood is never a closed chapter. We can also look towards works of literature that describe childhood, or psychoanalytic accounts, such as those of Winnicott, who articulates connections between the realm of illusion and playfulness and that of creative experience, proposing a certain continuity of childlikeness within experience throughout the life course (1971).

An exchange between Walter Kohan and David Kennedy (2008) focuses on the ontology of childhood through the lenses of temporality, power and language. Kohan cites pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus: ‘Time is a child childing, its realm is one of a child’ as a prelude to exploring complexities in the concept of time itself. Chronologically, child is at the beginning of the lifespan: time understood as fixings between points. But he suggests that the ‘time’ of childhood is another way of living time: a childlike way of being. Childhood is not a period of time but an intense and


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forceful experience of time. Kohan adds: ‘childhood is not […] an absence of power but a singular mode of practising power’ (ibid 2008:8).

Echoing Winnicott, Kennedy refers to childhood as an elusive condition of psychological immediacy, similar to forms of aesthetic experience such as the pleasure found in art or intimacy. We are all artists, philosophers and all childlike. Kennedy suggests: ‘as much as the philosopher carries a childlike way of questioning into adulthood, the artist carries a childlike way of acting on the world into adulthood, and both of these act to transform the world’ (ibid 2008:11). Child can shift from noun to verb. We can ask what does it mean to talk of child as something I can do: to child?

Kohan and Kennedy ask what forms of schooling can be imagined when child is understood as a way of being. Kohan suggests that we cannot talk about philosophical questions, it is the relationship to the question that counts, the putting of something into movement. This contrasts with the thinking skills based view that certain criteria for philosophical questions can be taught and applied. The relative degree of emphasis on ‘shared lived experience’ or ‘developing skills’, might be considered a marker of the distinction between the ‘with’ children and the ‘for’ children in the debate about how to philosophise in classrooms.

Towards P4C as imaginative, critical pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is concerned with critiquing educational institutions and transforming education and society. It aims for a better world. A critical pedagogy is one that seeks to redress social inequalities and challenge the prevailing social order and forms of discourse. It assumes that dominant groups in society tend to determine the dominant meanings attached to culture and most commonly expressed through the official curriculum of schools. Critical pedagogues value freedom of expression for students and seek an active role for students in the social production of meaning in the classroom. School is understood as a site of struggle, possibility and social change.

Critical pedagogy engages imaginative voices of self expression and social action. All voices in the classroom, including those of teachers, are viewed as partial and as needing to be questioned. However, critical pedagogues also understand that institutional authority does not just disappear when teachers opt for alternative methods. Teachers’ encouragement of students to express themselves and take an active part in things is sometimes not so far from coercion in the classroom. Innovations can become new routines. In the effort to acknowledge the institutionalised nature of relations of authority in schools, the community of philosophical enquiry can be conceptualised and enacted as a kind of political


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‘laboratory’ (Tiffany, 2008:9). It does not arrive ready-made in the classroom, but develops as a site of experimentation, negotiation and deliberation, however fragile. Perhaps it leaks out of the classroom and ferments.

In collaboration with Karin Murris, both individual and shared theorising and practice in recent years has focused on developing P4C as an imaginative critical pedagogy. In the section that follows I want to draw attention briefly to three dimensions of that project: firstly opening the philosophical space in classrooms through the treatment of picturebooks as philosophical texts for children and educators alike; secondly challenging censorship and extending children’s freedom of thought and expression, coupled with respect for their authority to speak of what they know and, thirdly, attention to philosophical listening.

Opening the space – picturebooks as philosophical texts

One of the most critical decisions a teacher makes is the selection of texts for teaching, a powerful choice whose significance is under-explored, in the context of discussion about children’s voice and participation in school. In Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy (Haynes & Murris, 2012) a set of criteria is proposed for choosing classroom resources that open up a space for imaginative philosophical deliberation in classrooms. Central to these criteria is the need to pay attention to the hospitality and receptiveness of a resource towards what is elusive, perplexing, troublesome or opaque. We suggest materials which maximise a sense of disorientation and uncertainty, provoking learners and teachers to co-construct meaning and knowledge together. Our book argues that such texts are open invitations to different ways of being and knowing – and that they provoke dissonance and disagreement about their meaning. They entice curiosity and liberate students from the anxiety of finding the answer teacher wants to hear. There are educational, ethical and philosophical reasons why certain picturebooks fulfil such criteria and tend to open up the space for thinking, when approached as philosophical texts.

Pictorial material generally offers wider access to ideas. Picturebooks can be funny and imaginative; and they are short, entire stories. A good selection illustrates variety of aesthetic and literary cultures. The aesthetic properties of the book enhance the power with which ideas and emotions are communicated. The boredom children often display in the face of specially created instructional material disappears when teachers introduce books that do not moralise or patronise, but communicate to readers that they are taken seriously as thinkers by offering rich, complex and ambiguous pictures and texts. Picturebooks are life-like, but, at the same time, different enough to highlight certain aspects of ‘reality’. Much of the power of


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picturebooks lies in what they omit: leaving out much of ‘the real’, serves to emphasise one particular dimension of experience in the world, making this all the more powerful and ripe to explore. With their multiple narratives, ambiguity and contradictions, picturebooks are emotionally and intellectually demanding texts for children and adults alike. The reader is pulled into different directions of meaning-making through the conjunction of images and/or text. A philosophical response begins with, but goes beyond meaning-making within the text (Haynes& Murris, 2009a, 2012). The proliferation of visual media in recent years has led to a blurring of forms both within and beyond the world of children’s literature.

One of the most striking features of many picturebooks is the way in which they seem to assume the presence of both child and adult readers. The narratives often address an intergenerational audience, making them particularly powerful in terms of philosophising with children. The provocative nature of some picturebooks directly addresses relations between adult and child and often questions adult authority and control. It is the way in which they open up concepts of adult/child and tackle controversial themes that often makes them troublesome for teachers (Haynes &

Murris, 2009b, 2012). The care and responsibility involved in choosing a classroom resource involves an evaluation of both form and content, and their interrelationship, which is never ‘innocent’, but always has aesthetic, epistemological, metaphysical, ethical and political dimensions.

Challenging censorship, extending children’s freedom of thought and expression

Controversial topics present educators with ethical decisions. The open ended nature of philosophical enquiry seems to make such decisions all the more likely. Children’s picturebooks reflect a wide range of narratives and may portray events such as a robbery, children being taken from their homes, interaction between children and ‘strangers’, or characters such as goblins and witches. Some may provoke questions about good and evil, love, sex, dying and death. Through experience of working with children and educators it has become apparent that certain picturebooks are more likely to provoke questions that can trigger a censorial response in teachers. This is often accompanied by the comment that such texts give children ‘the wrong message’ (Haynes & Murris, 2009a), a direct reference to the traditional role of children’s literature in moral education.

In the effort to understand the avoidance and anxiety that some picturebooks arouse in adults, our recent publications have examined these ‘dangerous’ picturebooks in some detail. Our book develops a series of arguments against censorship and proposes forms of philosophical teaching that offer an alternative response (Haynes & Murris, 2012). The key points of these arguments are as follows:


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Literary Argument: In the interests of a broad education children should enjoy the freedom to explore all the themes that are raised by the full range of children’s literature.

Authenticity argument: Children need to engage in genuine dialogue with others in order to experience independence of thought and develop skepticism.

Epistemological argument: Knowledge is contestable – children can be included in the process of constructing knowledge and understanding

Pragmatic argument: Children are bound to meet difficult and sensitive issues and it is preferable that these are explored through shared reasoning and dialogue

Political and moral argument: Participation in a democratic community is the most effective way to build, maintain and extend democratic values

Legal argument: In accordance with human rights, children should enjoy rights to freedom of thought and expression.

Socio- philosophical argument: The process of education should address children as beings in the here and now, not just as becomings in the future

Whilst we recognise practical restrictions on freedom of expression in the institutional context of schools, political limitation of children’s freedom of thought and expression takes many forms. It includes the banning of certain texts or not allowing certain texts to be a focus for open-ended enquiry. Voices are also silenced through the responses that adults make, when children articulate questions and theories: responses of outright or implicit dismissal or suspicion, inauthenticity or distancing sentimentality. In the context of dominant institutionalised discourses about childhood, educators are often inclined ‘read’ children’s utterances as ‘examples’ of a particular not-yet-adult developmental phase. Murris has recently explored such adult responses as expressions of epistemic injustice against children (Murris, under review).

The community of philosophical enquiry offers an alternative to censorship and disrespect for children’s authority to speak of what they know. Our experiences of talking through such concerns with teachers have led us to develop our proposals for teacher education (Haynes & Murris, 2011). These are briefly outlined in the section on implications for policy towards the end of this paper.

Philosophical listening?

Listening attentively to children is associated with the effort of treating them with greater fairness, justice and inclusivity: an orientation towards social justice. Many educational practitioners want to (re)build trust and to work with greater freedom, tact, care and optimism. In this ethical climate, listening to children has taken centre stage.


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As suggested by the discussion of child and childhood in this paper, these searches for understanding of listening to child, and to children, point to the need for an expanded interpretation of rationality. Italian philosopher Corradi Fiumara does not reject rationalism but seeks to counterbalance its capacity for closure and generalisation. She calls for rigorous philosophical activity but wants to include an exploration of those things that ‘normal’ rationality tends to exclude because it is unable to grasp or systematise them. She suggests that when we seriously engage in listening, our ‘rational’ point of view may be impoverished by the state of disorientation that results (1990:43). She argues that listening is not linked to a particular philosophical orientation but is itself a ‘form of rationality’ that is ‘underlying, going along with or reaching beyond, but not as being in opposition to anything’. This philosophical effort is one that ‘tends to free the movements of consciousness from those meta-paradigms that predetermine it’ (1990:91). She further suggests: ‘in authentically philo-sophical moments a part of our mind seems to remain suspended […]an attitude of waiting that attracts and promotes the emergence of thought in the other’ (1990:189). The opening for those seeking to listen to children in classrooms is learning to live with such disorientation and uncertainty, whilst simultaneously holding responsibility for their care. It implies commitment and effort and a real interest in children’s lived experiences and perspectives (Haynes & Murris 2011a)

Are we prepared to treat our knowledge as contestable? Are we willing to inhabit the perplexity of children’s questions when we think we already have the answers? Authentic listening in the classroom implies adopting a position of fallibility, turning one’s back on the assumption that older is necessarily wiser, and accepting that child, like any other, can reveal something not yet considered or so far unspoken. The community of philosophical enquiry proposes a pedagogical framework to enable such a move, by positioning children, and the adult facilitator, as co-enquirers (Murris & Haynes, 2002), but there is a need for watchfulness.

When the wolves have been chased away, we start to notice the elephants, as happens to the family in the dark but humorous picturebook Wolves in the Walls (Gaiman & McKean, 2003). We accept the complexity of education and slipperiness of communication, the interplays of power that can bring listening and learning to a halt. Like the sleepless and sensitive princess in the well known fairy tale, philosophically minded educators need to be kept awake by the philosophical pea underneath all the ideological, policy and curriculum mattresses (Child & Borland, 2005). Unlike the princess who (out of politeness) keeps to herself the nightly disturbance experienced, we should continue to pose the awkward questions.

Starting again


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Socially inclusive dialogue remains a cautious ideal. In reality it is difficult to achieve and stays out of reach, particularly in the context of teacher education and schools. This is partly because of the socialising role of mass education and the result of a social discourse that describes children as subjects to be produced, minds to be formed, bodies to be measured and as objects of study. Philosophy with children creates the possibility of a shift away from talk of measurement and formation towards talk of situated human lives and communities. As an imaginative critical pedagogy it offers hope and a counter to normalising education through engaging dialogically with learners and with the relationship between knowledge and power. In their review of dialogue as teaching Burbules and Bruce (2001:1119) articulate the political tensions when they conclude with the question: ‘Is dialogue inherently "normalizing," or can it be adapted to broader horizons of inclusiveness? On the other hand (perversely), when it does succeed at being more inclusive, is this at the cost of requiring participants to give up or compromise elements of their difference?’

I certainly do not underestimate the power and influence of dominant ideologies and their ‘hold’ on in schools. What I do hold on to is the view that educators, both individually and collectively, can and do make important choices about where to focus their teaching. A critical pedagogical framework cannot sidestep difficulty, errors and the arguments and emotions that accompany controversy in lived experience. In schools disruption is often grounds for exclusion, seldom interpreted as a form of resistance or critique of the social order. Philosophical thinking is often thinking that disrupts so there is a need to overcome our kneejerk antipathy to all forms of disruption. The troublesome could be exactly what is required.

Conclusions – implications for educational policy

CurriculumThe big question here is whether philosophy lessons should become part of the school curriculum. This is bound to be as hotly contested as other subjects, particularly when it comes down to the detail of content and form of such lessons and who is qualified to teach them.

ResearchOne immediate issue, should the idea of P4C be taken up more widely in schools, is to do with teachers’ abilities to work philosophically with children. We need to ask much more awkward questions about practice and about the claims made for P4C. At present research focuses on academic and behavioural goals by and large and is very limited in its scope. The emphasis so often is on the utterances or performance of either children or of teachers. Are they asking the right sort of questions, or making the right kind of moves, for example? Maybe it would be useful to ask what kind of


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teaching is philosophical. What does philosophical teaching look like? What does it mean to experience philosophical enquiry?

Teacher education and continuing professional developmentOne policy step would be to move away from the idea of teacher training and try out a philosophical model of teacher education broadly consistent with the aims and principles of communities of enquiry. Moments of disequilibrium in philosophical enquiry are to be expected and are educative in themselves (Murris, 2008). Critical episodes experienced in the context of bringing child and philosophy together in the compulsory school classroom are particularly valuable ‘resources’ for professional development. In recent papers, we have proposed a grounded approach to teacher education and professional development that also adopts an imaginative and critical pedagogical perspective, drawing directly on troublesome recurring themes that have emerged from our work with teachers and P4C educators. These throw up, for example, problems of teaching as delivery, notions of progression in learning, epistemological and moral relativism, the nature of philosophical questions, students’ ownership of questions. We have conceived this as a form of philosophical practitioner research. Teacher education needs to provide a much stronger foundation in philosophical methods that can inform professional practical judgments, by embedding them in the ongoing investigation of classroom practice and the lives of teachers and students in educational communities (Haynes & Murris, 2011).

Teachers benefit from discovering their own philosophical voices. P4C training naturally draws teachers’ attention to significant aspects of classroom interaction, highlighted in the kind of critical episodes of educational interaction: the necessity to question, freedom of thought and expression, the meaning of reason, the cultivation of independence of mind, difficulty and controversy and the conditions that enable thinking and dialogue to flourish. A P4C styled professional development process can enable teachers to identify important connections to much wider debates in society about childhood, knowledge, education, power and democracy: debates that impinge on their public role and professional judgments. It provides an exceptional forum to explore the kinds of risks and responsibilities that are entailed in a professional role and the courage and determination required to bring about a culture change and to work with children respectfully and fairly in everyday life (Haynes & Murris, 2012).

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Documents

Feeling the pea beneath the mattresses: philosophy with children as