[Xmca-l] Re: Doing Philosophy with kids

[mike cole]

Thanks for the extra info, Kim.
More interesting questions than mine have appeared. I'll be interested to
see how the discussion proceeds.

mike


On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Kim Skinner <kskinner@lsu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Mike,
>
> By your questions I see I need to provide even more background for this
> study, which I did find challenging in the space an article-length
> manuscript provides. This study took place in a Texas public school where
> remedial after school offerings were plentiful and
> often mandatory for certain children but non-remedial opportunities were
> scarce and short-lived. The philosophy club was announced to
> the grade 4 students at a beginning of the year assembly and touted as an
> opportunity for children to talk and think together
> as participants in philosophical conversations once a week, after school.
> As the only school in this district for grade 4 and 5 students, 210 grade 4
> students attended this school. The philosophy club was open to all students
> and the first twenty signed parental permission slips were granted entry.
> (A similar offering for grade 3 and 4 students in a nearby school district
> admitted 30 students but the office had to time stamp the returned
> permission slips and create a waiting list as 62 were returned the first
> day.) What we found was both students and parents had considerable interest
> in unique after school learning opportunities when admission was open and
> without cost.
>
> Attendance did fluctuate slightly over time, primarily due to a few
> children being required by the principal to attend remedial after school
> sessions due to poor grades in either reading or math. While all of the
> children's responses were not included in this article, as I cited in my
> full-length study,
> there was differential take-up of learning opportunities by the child
> participants. In Informal interviews with several key participants, some
> children expressed difficulty not focusing on the "right answer" and one
> child admitted he was uncomfortable voicing his ideas and preferred to
> write them
> in his reflection journals. The children had the opportunity to respond
> orally and in writing each session, though I did not include the reflection
> journal data in this manuscript.
>
> Thank you for sharing the P4C example from a preschool classroom.
> Children's literature as a stimulus for philosophical conversation often
> yields such fabulous results!
> Kim
>
>
>
> Kim Skinner, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor, Literacy Studies
> Louisiana State University
> School of Education
> 226 Peabody Hall
> Baton Rouge, LA 70803
> 225.578.6709
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces+kskinner=lsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+kskinner=lsu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole
> <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, November 8, 2015 12:14 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l]  Doing Philosophy with kids
>
> Kim et al--
>
>
>
> I have long been interested in the philosophy for children ideas of Lipmann
> and Mathews, as well as the potentials of afterschool activities as a space
> in which to enrich children's experiences with the stuff being crammed at
> them in school, so it was especially interesting to see the two combined.
> The collation of ideas from discursive psychology and Vygotskian, as well
> as the toolkit of methods seems to be very helpful in understanding what
> was transpiring.
>
>
>
> But I came away with a few questions.
>
>
>
> Re afterschool. A major question I had as I started the paper was how
> successful a "doing philosophy" club would be for 9-10 year olds (which I
> assume 4th graders to be). In our work we have always focused on the
> voluntary nature of participation, so kids have to want to come. Seemed
> like quite a challenge!
>
>
>
> Am I right that about half the kids dropped out by session 7 or was it that
> attendance fluctuated a lot so that you just happened to have few kids on
> sessions 7 and 19? With respect to the question of opportunities to learn
> that you raise in the introduction, what should we make of this? Only some
> kids like doing philosopy? And of those who liked it,
>
> were opportunities differentially taken up by different kids? It was hard
> for me to follow.
>
>
>
> I have a question about the use of the term, activity, which is very often
> brings me grief when reading Vygotsky and many others because the term
> seems to be polysemic within
>
> texts. For example,
>
> "The expression doing philosophy signals philosophy as an activity, like
> doing work (Wittgenstein) vs : "I considered an event as a set of
> activities bound together by a common theme or purpose."
>
>
>
> Would it be doing an injustice to your thinking to refer to events as
> (collective) actions that are bound together by the common activity of
> doing philosophy"?
>
>
>
> I was impressed after reading through the paper how importantly it
> contrasts with standard education where the most problematic thing a
> teacher can do is to assert that s/he does not know the answer to a
> question or that there is no right answer. It seems as if embedding a
> "doing philosophy" curriculum in schools that can survive in the very
> different set of the ground rules of transmissiong, direct-instruction
> regimes is to embed it in the language arts/literacy part of the
> curriculum, which in different ways by Mathews and Lipman.
>
>
>
>  Below is one of my favorite examples of philosophy in the preschool using
> a book and author for whom so many core philosophical issues appear in
> appealing form.
>
>
>
> Thanks for the informative article.
>
> mike
>
> -----------------
>
> The Kindergartners in Vivian Paley’s classroom are discussing the story by
> Leo Leoni of Tico, a wingless bird who is cared for by his black-winged
> friends. In the story, the wishingbird visits Tico one night and grants him
> a wish. Tico wishes for golden wings. When his friends see his golden wings
> in the morning, they are angry. They abandon him because he wants to be
> better than they are. Tico is upset by his friends’ rejection and wants to
> gain readmission to the group. He discovers that he can exchange his golden
> feathers for black ones by performing good deeds. When at last he has
> replaced all the golden feathers with black ones, he is granted readmission
> by the flock, whose members comment, “Now you are just like us” (Leoni,
> 1964).
>
> *Teacher:* I don’t think it’s fair that Tico has to give up his golden
> wings.
>
> *Lisa:* It is fair. See, he was nicer when he didn’t have any wings. They
> didn’t like him when he had gold.
>
> *Wally:* He thinks he’s better if he has golden wings.
>
> *Eddie:* He is better.
>
> *Jill:* But he’s not supposed to be better. The wishingbird was wrong to
> give him those wings.
>
> *Deana:* She has to give him his wish. He’s the one who shouldn’t have
> asked for golden wings.
>
> *Wally:* He could put black wings on top of the golden wings and try to
> trick them.
>
> *Deana:* They’d sneak up and see the gold. He should just give every bird
> one golden feather and keep one for himself.
>
> *Teacher:* Why can’t he decide for himself what kind of wings he wants?
>
> *Wally:* He has to decide to have black wings.
>
> (Paley, 1981, pp. 25–26)
>
> --
>
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch