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

Conclusion on chapter II
“Philosophy also includes the discipline of ethics, and Philosophy for Children has proven to be an ideal program for values education” [12,34]. Children’s experience is replete with ethical concerns and issues, though they may be only dimly aware of this. And through television, the internet and other media, children today are exposed to ideas and images which not so long ago would have been reserved for adults. Like adults, children often perceive the world as a jumble of alternative possibilities. Rather than dictate a set of prescribed values to children, Philosophy for Children seeks to help them strengthen their own capacity to appraise and respond to these beckoning alternatives; to self-correct their habits of thought, feeling and action through sustained ethical inquiry. Moreover, Philosophy for Children’s egalitarian nature, commitment to varying viewpoints and insistence on the inherent value of all participants helps foster empathy and pro-social behavior as an essential basis for values education.
Jean Piaget’s well-known theory of cognitive development suggests that prior to age 11 or 12, most children are not capable of philosophical thinking. This is because, it holds, prior to this time, children are not capable of “thinking about thinking,” the sort of meta-level thinking that philosophical thinking requires. This level of cognitive development includes analogical reasoning about relationships, such as: “Bicycle is to handlebars as ship is to rudder, with ‘steering mechanism’ being the similar relationship” [13,56]. However, there is a solid body of psychological research that indicates Piaget’s account seriously underestimates children’s cognitive abilities. In response, advocates of bringing philosophy into the schools such as Matthew Lipman and his colleague Ann Margaret Sharp have countered that the introduction of philosophy can enhance the entire educational experience of students. They urge that the aim is more than simply the introduction of one more subject in the schools. Philosophy, they insist, invites students to reflect on relationships among different areas of inquiry and to make sense of their educational experiences as a whole. This can add to the meaningfulness of students’ education as a whole. In addition, philosophy can make important contributions to another area of concern that cuts across the curriculum, critical thinking.