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Nursery school pupils taught philosophy. Except they weren’t.
6 CommentsBBC News Scotland reports that “Children as young as four are being taught philosophy in nursery”. Apparently the children are being asked “simple, open-ended questions such as “how do you know that? What shows that?”.” Now I’m a Philosophy graduate, but I don’t think it’s that which has trained me to see the difference between Philosophy and asking interesting questions. Goodness me… ;)
Published on February 5, 2007 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
6 Responses to “Nursery school pupils taught philosophy. Except they weren’t.”
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I have noticed a trend towards packaging things in impressive descriptors. I'm not sure why. Who do you suppose is the target audeience? Who is supposed to be impressed? Parents? Officials within other education systems?
Recently I read a description of something I was supposed to do for one of the modules on my MA course, and my stomach flopped over. Aghast, I said to my lecturer, "I can't do that! I wouldn't know where to start." When she explained to me what I was being asked to do, my stomach settled back again. "Oh, is that all? Why didn't you just say so, then?"
I also read a job description for a role similar to mine and told a colleague that I was obviously getting left behind in the field, since I wasn't able to do any of the things mentioned. Together we explored the wording and managed to translate it back into a description of pretty much what I do every day anyway.
Now I'm pretty articulate, and my vocab has never proved lacking. Also, I have never espoused the dumbing down mentality. So, if the language of these matters that are part of my life is a mystery to me, how must it be for those who are trying to get started? -
Although I think the wording is dodgy in the article, what the nursery children have been doing is the start of philosophy. It is how the children respond to the questions / answers given that makes it philosophy….
Andrew -
Andrew, you have a point, but it is really being dressed up as something it's not. Asking open-ended questions is just good teaching!
There's more in another Guardian article about how they intend to extend the programme into secondary schools. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for it – let's just call a spade a spade (and not an earth-moving device…) :)
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ostrov said on December 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Thank you,
very interesting article -
Fred said on January 19th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
thank you, very interesting idea
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