Linked with Michel Sasseville – Canada; with Matthew Lipman – USA; and with The IAPC program.
ChildrenThinking was set up by practising teachers in order to provide support and training in the area of Philosophy with Children. It coordinates a range of courses and systems of mentoring and support for teachers and students.
upgrades on Dec 3, 2014: Homepage; Who? What? How? Why? Resources; Training; Stay in Touch;
Philosophy in action: Philosophy with Children is a method of enabling children to philosophise using the model of Socratic Dialogue with the aid of a facilitator.
Socrates states in Apologia 38a that « the unexamined life is not worth living », and it is upon this principle that PWC is built.
The method requires children to reason and explain their thinking, to listen and to build on the ideas of others. This happens within a Community of Enquiry in the classroom.
The children sit in a circle with a facilitator (the teacher). The facilitator’s role is to help the children uncover the philosophical in the issues that they discuss. In this way, the teacher is an enabler and not a ‘font of knowledge’. The children lead the dialogue, steering it in the direction they choose. The facilitator asks questions to enable the children to enquire more deeply and challenge their assumptions.