How to do acts with thoughts. Some implications of making philosophy available to children
For a child to say "I see, I understand now!" is an awareness event, a light that exposes him to both a new challenge and to the unknown. If these sorts of moments are obviously an important personal event, along with the feeling of being an agent of his life, we could say a lot about their value at school, in the society or on the world stage. In this paper, my aim is limited to exploring how children and teenagers, involved in philosophical dialogues at school, enter into a reflective and dialogical process, become awareness of what is happening to them and draw out rules of action. Using a theoretical model inspired by Peirce's conception of active thinking, this study is based on both a qualitative analysis of discursive activity performed in communities of philosophical inquiry, and interviews with students who have been practicing philosophy for children for two or three years, in a French middle-school. Some practical implications in conjunction with educational projections could thus be outlined.
More...