Teaching Philosophy to Children and the Status of Critical Thinking

Today the development of information technology has caused fast changes in science, technology and their related techniques. Thus, educational systems must plan teaching of fundamentals for the acquiring, organizing and using information in a way that the learner becomes capable of creating knowledge. The program of teaching Philosophy to children (P4C) aims to help children in a way that they gain a philosophical mind by the use of philosophical thinking and be able to analyze everyday problems by reasoning and logic. Philosophical thinking, thinking about the existence of self and creatures, is something which everyone finds within himself. The basis of thinking techniques must be taught from early days of the child’s life. Educational systems of primary schools have mainly focused on the teaching of reading, writing and mathematics whereas in addition to the above teaching systems, the ability of learning and thinking can also be increased by way of metacognition. To reach such an aim, education must be considered a kind of research. Lipman believes that philosophy can be taught to children by way of doing a kind of “community of inquiry” in the form of stories, poems, drama, etc. he considers stories as natural means of developing thought, knowledge, and verbal skills.Lipman has designed the program of teaching philosophy to children under the influences of Socrates, John Dewey and Pears. He tried to introduce philosophy by using Socrates’ way of thinking; in this meaning philosophy is a method to develop the contemplation power and correct thinking. Lipman does not mean the studying of philosophical theories and thoughts but having a kind of applied and purposeful philosophy and also philosophical thinking and attending to philosophical activities in a way that the child’s thinking is moved from unconsciousness, superficiality and usualness to consciousness, depth and criticality. Philosophical thinking is thinking about thought and it includes cognitive and metacognitive aspects and the first step in cognition is gaining knowledge about the self.
Today one of the important tasks of educational systems is developing critical thinking. Critical thinking is mainly criticizing the self and then, in the second place, it pays attention to criticizing scientific ideas or other people. On the other hand as information technology and communication develop, the need to critical thinking in order to process information also increases. The basis of critical thinking is also based on Socrates’ theories; because he emphasized on deep questioning, exploring themes, evaluating reasoning and analyzing fundamental concepts.