摘要：In the introductory course, “Philosophy and Children,” my students and I explore the concept of doing philosophy with children within the larger framework of educational questions such as what ought education to achieve? How can children best learn and what should they be learning? What kind of people do we want our children to be? Many of the students are experienced elementary and secondary teachers; often they are parents too. The concept of philosophy is foreign to them and they come to this course suspicious that philosophy is equally inaccessible and mysterious to children as well. They are aware that children make interesting and at times puzzling comments but the image of children holding philosophic discussions eludes them. Consequently, this question of the legitimacy of children is philosophical query becomes an important issue to explore and test. They achieve this by holding a philosophical discussion with a group of children using a children’s book as a catalyst. The group can be as large as a whole classroom of 25 students or as small as several friends from the neighborhood. I warn them that children may not be familiar with talking about books in this way and that they will need to explain the nature of their discussion: questions will not focus on content nor psychological motives of the characters but rather on the ideas that puzzle the children or that appear problematical in some way. What does the story make us think about? We echo Pixie (from Lipman’s novel of the same name): we talk about what the “zoo trip” (or children’s story in our case) makes us think of.
