Contents introduction chapter I. A great children’s writer: H. Ch anderson

CHAPTER II. PHILOSOPHY AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: H. CH ANDERSON AND OTHER CHILDREN’S WRITERS
2.1. Philosophical approach and its importance in the literature of children
Philosophical approaches are currently used in classrooms the world over. They are Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism, and Reconstructionism.
Philosophy offers children the chance to explore ordinary but puzzling concepts, to improve their thinking, to make more sense of their world and to discover for themselves what is to be valued and cherished in that world.
The advent of Philosophy for Children also coincides with the recognition that emerged in the third quarter of the 20th century that children are capable of thinking critically and creatively, and that a major aim of education should be to help children become more reasonable – the “fourth R”. And as reading and writing are taught to children through the discipline of literature, why not make reasoning and judgment available to them through the discipline of philosophy? However, these benefits don’t come from learning about the history of philosophy or philosophers. Rather, as with reading, writing and arithmetic, the benefits of philosophy come through the doing – through active engagement in rigorous philosophical inquiry.
Philosopher Gareth Matthews went further and argued at length that Piaget failed to see the philosophical thinking manifest in the very children he studied. In Philosophy and the Young Child, Matthews provides a number of delightful illustrations of very young children’s philosophical puzzlement. For example: father while busily engaged in licking a pot, asked, “Papa, how can we be sure that everything is not a dream?”, going to bed at eight one evening, asked, “If I go to bed at eight and get up at seven in the morning, how do I really know that the little hand of the clock has gone around only once? Do I have to stay up all night to watch it? If I look away even for a short time, maybe the small hand will go around twice, who had seen airplanes take off, rise, and gradually disappear into the distance, took his first plane ride. When the plane stopped ascending and the seat-belt sign went out, John Edgar turned to his father and said in a rather relieved, but still puzzled, tone of voice, “Things don’t really get smaller up here.” [9, 4]
However, it might be objected, commonly observable as they might be, more than such anecdotes are needed to show that children are capable of serious philosophical thinking. What is needed is evidence that children are capable of sustained philosophical discussion. Matthews (1984) provides illustrations of this, too. For example, meeting with a group of 8–11-year-old, he used the following example to develop a story for discussion: Ian (six years old) found to his chagrin that the three children of his parents’ friends monopolized the television; they kept him from watching his favorite program. “Mother,” he asked in frustration, “why is it better for three children to be selfish than one?” (Matthews 1984, 92–3)
This generated a lively discussion in which children commented on the inconsiderateness of the three visiting children, the desirability of working out a solution that would satisfy all four children, the importance of respecting people’s rights, and how one might feel if he or she were in Ian’s place. Matthews then posed a possible utilitarian approach: “What about this argument, that if we let the three visitors have their way, three people will be made happy instead of just one?” One reply was that it would not be fair for three people to get what they want at the expense of a fourth. This triggered a discussion of fairness that addressed more specific concerns about the relative ages of the children, whether they are friends, siblings, or strangers—and what types of television programs are involved.
No doubt, part of the explanation of the children’s ability and willingness to carry on an extended discussion of Ian’s circumstance is that they have faced similar challenges. Still, they exhibited a rather sophisticated grasp of the conceptual and moral issues at hand, which is what one might expect from children once they are invited to reflect on their own experiences.
Stories about children roughly one’s own age can provide opportunities to discuss ideas that are most important to a child. Consider this example from Matthew Lipman’s novel Lisa (1983). Harry and his friend Timmy go to a stamp club to trade stamps. Afterward they stop for ice cream cones, but Timmy discovers he has no money. Harry offers to buy him one, and Timmy says he will buy Harry a cone next time. As they are leaving the store, one of their classmate’s trips Timmy. Timmy then knocks the tripper’s books off the table. After running away from the scene, Timmy and Harry talk about what has happened:
“I couldn’t let them get away with it,” Timmy remarked when they saw that they weren’t being pursued and could slow down to a walk. “He didn’t have to stick his foot out.” Then he added, “Of course, I didn’t have to do what I did either. But, like I said before, turnabout is fair play.”
“Somehow,” Harry thought, “it isn’t quite the same thing.” But he couldn’t figure out why. “I don’t know,” he said finally to Timmy. “The purpose of your stamp club is to exchange stamps. So, when you give someone stamps, you’re supposed to give something back. Just like if someone lends me money, I’m supposed to give it back. But if someone pulls a dirty trick on you, should you do the same thing to him? I’m not so sure.”
“But I had to get even,” Timmy protested. “I couldn’t let him get away with it, tripping me like that for no reason.”
A bit later they met Lisa and Laura. Harry told the girls what had happened and why he was puzzled. “It reminds me,” remarked Lisa, “of last year when we were learning about how some sentences could be turned around and would stay true, while others, when you turned them around, would become false.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed, “but there we found a rule. What’s the rule here?” Lisa tossed her long hair so that it hung over her right shoulder. “It looks like there are times when it is right to give back what we got and other times when it is wrong. But how do we tell which is which?
This passage is an invitation to explore the moral nuances of reciprocity, or “returning in kind.” What might a group of 10–11-year-olds have to say about this? Here is a sampling from a lengthy discussion of the Lisa passage by a group of fifth graders (Pritchard 1996). With very little prompting from the teacher, the students raised and vigorously pursued questions such as the following.
Those favoring adding philosophy to K-12 school programs face the challenges of an already crowded curriculum and growing pressure to provide quantifiable evidence of student mastery of the standard subjects of history, literature, math, and science. Where is time to be found for the give-and-take of philosophical discussions? Adding philosophy to the mix, doubters object, only makes matters worse. Not only is it yet another subject, it is one that many teachers may find unsettling. They may fear that philosophy’s continual questioning will actually interfere with students’ mastery of the subjects already in the curriculum. Given the unsettling nature of much philosophical inquiry, they may feel vulnerable as teachers because they are not confident of their own answers to the questions posed.
Adding to this problem is increasing pressure on teachers to demonstrate that their students are performing at satisfactory levels in already established subjects. Standardized tests are commonly used as the measure of student achievement. Marked by definitive, unambiguous questions and answers, these tests do not place a premium on philosophical reflection. Since student performance is typically linked to school funding, this is not something teachers can take lightly, however skeptical some of them might be about the educational value of preparing their students to perform well on standardized tests.
In the mid-1960s, Matthew Lipman became dismayed at the low quality of argumentation employed by presumably well-educated citizens discussing the Vietnam war and society’s ills in general. Convinced that the teaching of logic should begin long before college, he tried to figure out a way to do this that would stimulate the interest of 10–11 year old. Leaving his secure position of teaching philosophy at Columbia University for an open ended one at Montclair State College, he undertook work on his first children’s novel, Harry Stettheimer’s Discovery. Lipman’s concerns about the level of critical thinking in society in general, and the schools in particular, were not his alone. By the 1970s the hue and cry for teaching critical thinking in the schools was, if not clear, at least loud; and it has continued largely unabated to the present.
What is meant by ‘critical thinking’? Characterizations range in complexity from Robert Ennis’s admirably brief, “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Ennis 1987) to a complex statement by a group of 46 panelists convened by the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Pre-College Philosophy to employ the Delphi Method of striving for consensus: