Reconstruction in Philosophy for Children

Jennifer Bleazby

Lipmans Philosophy for Children program (hereafter P4C) is highly influenced
by the philosophy of J ohn Dewey. P4C aims to facilitate the development of a
Deweyian notion of communal inquiry as the process through which meaning is
constructed. Lipman also holds a Deweyian, pragmatic notion of meaning,
according to which the meaning of an idea is given by its use or application in
bringing about intended consequences.
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It follows that Lipman must also accept
Deweys claim that inquiry is practical, in that it necessarily involves the testing
and application of ideas. While Lipman seems to agree with Dewey in theory,
his P4C pedagogy excludes practicality, as it does not require that students test
and apply their ideas and skills to real situations. Consequently, P4C cant fully
facilitate good thinking, meaningful learning and a reflective, caring and
thoughtful disposition.
2
As the facilitation of such ideals is P4Cs educational
goal this is a serious problem. In this paper I intend to offer a solution to P4Cs
problematic lack of practicality. I believe this problem derives from the fact that
P4C incorporates a notion of philosophy as theoretical, abstract and
unconnected to everyday, concrete experience. Thus, I recommend that P4C
embrace the Deweyian ideal of philosophy, which conceives of philosophical
inquiry as grounded in real social problems. As such, philosophy is the means to
understanding and solving concrete problems.
3
If P4C embraced this ideal of
philosophy, its classroom Community of Inquiry (hereafter COI) would involve
an analysis of actual social problems and the construction, testing and
application of real solutions. My intention here is to outline what such a
Practical P4C Program might look like.
I will consider the dominant ideal of practical learning, which is often called
service learning. Service learning usually involves students performing
community service activities primarily as a means to facilitating various
learning outcomes.
4
However, in practice, many service learning programs fail
to fully facilitate the reflective, creative, caring and critical inquiry and
disposition, and the meaningful practice that they intend. I will argue that a
fundamental reason for this is that these programs tend to focus on the
facilitation of desirable attributes and skills, while underestimating the
importance of students actually bringing about real social change.
Consequently, they often involve students performing pre-arranged activities,
which actually fail to necessitate student inquiry and meaningful practice. J ust
as pedagogies emphasizing thinking, such as P4C, often overlook inquirys
practical aspect, advocates of service learning often underestimate the essential
inquiry aspect of meaningful practice.
Thus, the type of practical learning I prescribe for P4C is similar to that
described by Kahne and Westheimer, which emphasizes social change.
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I will
refer to this as social reconstruction learning in order to distinguish it from
other service learning practices. Social reconstruction learning involves the
identification of social problems in order to develop and implement real
solutions to them. Its not that social reconstruction learning disregards the
facilitation of various skills and attributes. If students have to reconstruct real
social problems then they will have to develop and utilize complex inquiry skills
and thoughtful dispositions in order to construct and meaningfully apply
effective solutions.
As Kahne and Westheimer point out, such social reconstruction learning
resembles Deweys pedagogy and notion of philosophy.
6
Consequently, social
reconstruction learning necessitates the development of the Deweyian ideal of
communal inquiry, which is the means to reconstructing problems through
constructing, testing and applying suitable solutions. As facilitating this
Deweyian ideal of communal inquiry is the principal educational goal of P4C, I
believe that social reconstruction learning can enhance P4Cs ability to facilitate
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the types of thinking, dispositions, thoughtful actions, meaningful learning,
caring relationships and communities that it intends. Furthermore, as P4Cs
pedagogy and content has been designed specifically so as to facilitate the type
of Deweyian communal inquiry that is necessary for effective social
reconstruction, P4C can significantly improve social reconstruction learning.

1. Philosophical Problems as Social Problems

The first step in transforming P4C into a form of social reconstruction learning
involves the adoption of Deweys notion of philosophy. However, connecting
the generally abstract subject matter of philosophy to concrete social problems
may initially seem difficult or even impossible. This concern was raised recently
by a colleague who used the particularly abstract problems of Philosophy of
Mind as an example of the difficulty in connecting philosophical problems to
actual social problems. However, Deweys own philosophy exemplifies the
possibility of concretizing philosophy in this way. For example, Dewey argues
that the mind/body problem, the problem of other minds, and epistemological
skepticism can all be connected to individualism. Dewey states that in Greek,
medieval and barbarian societies, individuals desired to be free of the
authoritarianism which had become the way of life. Rather then uncritically
accepting information and instructions from authorities, individuals desired to
experience things for themselves. According to Dewey, this provoked libertarian
societies that emphasised the rights of individuals to achieve knowledge for
themselves, free from the coercion and interference of society and nature. As a
consequence the individual mind became isolated from the potentially coercive
world, including its own body and other people. This created an apparent gap
between mind-body, subject-object, and self-other. Philosophy then became
preoccupied with bridging this pseudo-epistemological gap. The failure to do so
gave rise to the doctrines of solipsism and skepticism.
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The accuracy of
Deweys explanation is debatable. The important thing is that it demonstrates
the achievability and purpose of his concept of philosophy.
While Deweys philosophy exemplifies how one can give even very abstract
philosophical problems a concrete, social origin, concretizing philosophical
solutions is more challenging, as they often do lack practical application.
However, this should be considered a serious flaw with this way of engaging in
philosophy. For Dewey, the meaning and value of a solution is determined by its
use in bringing about intended ends when applied. In general, the intended ends
are the reconstruction of a problematic situation into a meaningful experience.
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Thus, an inapplicable solution is meaningless as it has no reconstructive
capacity. As social reconstruction learning requires students to seek solutions
which can reconstruct real problems, a solutions lack of practicality would
justifies its rejection or modification. Similarly, if students cant connect
particular philosophical problems to real problems relevant to their own
experiences, then those problems will be meaningless in the same way that
mathematical problems, severed from real situations, so often are to students.
Thus, philosophical content that has absolutely no bearing on the lives of
students should not be part of the COI anyway, unless P4C wants to repeat the
mistake of traditional schooling, by transmitting meaningless information to
students.
However, like Dewey, I believe that all philosophical problems, if not
solutions, can be connected to concrete problems. The difficulty of doing this is
alleviated by P4C, which assumes that in order for students to really understand
ideas and methods they must be able to relate them to their own concrete
experiences.
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P4C encourages students to make connections between
philosophical issues and their own concrete experiences, through introducing
philosophical ideas in narratives which reflect the everyday experiences of
children and adolescents. After the reading of a story, students then ask
foundational questions, which set the agenda for the inquiry. Thus, the inquiry is
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initiated by and directed by the interests and understandings of students. This
ensures that the problems dealt with and the solutions raised relate to students
own experiences and understandings. Thus, in social reconstruction learning the
social-philosophical problems students investigate must also be selected by
students. Only then will students perceive of the problems as real and
meaningful, enabling and motivating them to come up with effective solutions.
By emphasizing the relation between the experiences and interests of students
and philosophical issues, P4C facilitates the concretization of Philosophy, which
is necessary for social reconstruction learning.
However, problems investigated must be social, not merely personal
problems. Making these types of connections between ones own experiences
and those of a whole societys requires some sophisticated thinking, such as
drawing inferences, constructing analogies, generalizing, making abstractions,
empathising with others, conceptual analysis, etc. P4C is pedagogically
structured so as to facilitate just this type of thinking through communal,
philosophical inquiry. The communal structure of P4C exposes students to the
differing views of others, which encourages one to make connections between
their own ideas and those of others. Teachers and students are required to
critically and carefully question each other in ways, which encourage
individuals to reflect on and re-construct their own situated, personal
experiences into more common experiences and problems.
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Thus, the
community has an objectifying and generalizing affect on students ideas and
shared experiences. Furthermore, philosophy involves the type of abstract,
analogical thinking and conceptual analysis that are needed to make connections
between particular and more general problems and issues.
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The philosophical
use and analysis of general concepts such as right, wrong, good, bad, fairness,
justice, freedom, friendship, community, democracy, citizenship, etc., can be
invaluable means for making connections between ones own experiences and
greater social conditions. For example, a student can use a construction of the
concept injustice as a connector or bridge between an experience of
punishment that they felt was unjust and other unjust social conditions or
laws.
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By concretizing these concepts in this way they also become more
meaningful. In general, philosophical inquiry involves making problems, ideas,
criteria, conditions, situations and argument forms abstract, which enables them
to be transferred and connected to other problems and ideas. The development
of abstract thinking in the COI will enable students to make connections and
construct analogies. Furthermore, Logic involves an analysis of the type of
inductive generalizations and analogical reasoning, which enable one to make
connections between particulars and more general ideas. Consequently, students
can consciously discuss and develop such reasoning abilities.
By requiring that we connect social problems to philosophy, social
reconstruction learning makes philosophical problems more meaningful and
practical by concretizing them. In turn, the Philosophical dimension of P4C can
provide social reconstruction with the tools needed to understand and articulate
social problems well so as to effectively reconstruct them. Philosophical
inquirys conceptual analysis, metacognitve aspect and problematizing nature,
enables it to really get beneath the surface of issues and to the source and
complexities of problems. Firstly, the discourses of different social problems
assume and use particular constructs of concepts, often problematic or biased
ones. Clarifying the particular understandings and uses of these concepts, as
well developing our own is necessary to understanding and articulating the
problem. Secondly, the epistemological aspect of philosophy involves an
analysis of how certain bodies of knowledge, meanings, and discourses were
constructed. Epistemological questioning enables us to identify if social
problems have been articulated in a biased manner, which exclude valuable
perspectives and ideas, contributing to the problem itself. Finally, philosophys
metacognitve aspect involves the analysis and evaluation of the process of
inquiry or thinking itself. This is fundamental because often inadequate inquiry
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practices contribute to, or are even the sources of many concrete social
problems. Furthermore, as understanding and articulating social problems is an
aspect of inquiry, students can also use Philosophys metacognitve aspect to
reflect on, evaluate and improve their own inquiry into the problem.

2. Activities for Reconstructing Social-Philosophical Problems

Once students have selected and articulated relevant social problems for
investigation they must begin to reconstruct those problems into meaningful
experiences through the construction and application of solutions. Service
learning frequently involves students participating in prearranged community
service activities. As Kahne and Westheimer argue these types of pre-arranged
activities rarely bring about significant change.
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Rather, by themselves many
pre-arranged community service activities actually reinforce and perpetuate the
social problems they are intended to solve through accepting them. For example,
students often assist in providing food for the homeless. However they are not
required to investigate the social, environmental, political, economic, and
personal conditions that lead to homelessness, nor are they required to develop
solutions that target these specific problems. Consequently, the students are
unlikely to develop a good understanding of the social problem, the people
affected by it or of the purpose and effectiveness of the task they are
performing. Students are unlikely to have a positive affect on a social problem
they dont really understand. As Paul Hanna, argues volunteerism and
community service are often promoted by conservative politicians as a means
for conserving the status quo, as an alternative to analysing structural problems
and developing expensive government programs.
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Furthermore, contrary to
their good intentions, service learning programs that involve pre-arranged
activities dont facilitate student inquiry. Rather, they reflect the knowledge
transmission methodology of traditional education, which encourages students
to be uncritical thinkers, dependent on others for knowledge and instruction.
This is another reason such service learning is inappropriate in general, but
particularly from a P4C perspective because it actually mitigates P4Cs goal to
promote thinking for oneself.
Since a Practical P4C Programs fundamental concern will be facilitating
inquiry as a means to social reconstruction, the activities that students perform
cant be prearranged activities. If we were to apply general, pre-arranged
solutions to particular problems we would be likely to ignore important
specificities, and impose inappropriate ideals and values on those affected by
the problem. Rather solutions must be constructed so as to address the specific
causes and conditions which provoke and maintain the problem, which has been
selected and articulated by students. Thus, the types of activities one would
expect to see in a Practical Philosophy Program would involve significant
student input into the design and implementation of them.

3. The Role of Inquiry in Social Reconstruction
Since social reconstruction learning requires that students construct solutions for
each particular problem dealt with, it also necessitates student inquiry. Students
must critically analyze and articulate the problem in order to identify the real
source and nature of the problem. They must then carefully create and test
alternative solutions and imagine their possible outcomes when applied to the
real situation. These solutions must actually be skillfully and thoughtfully
applied in order to bring about real change. Students must critically reflect on
applied solutions in order to assess their success and make improvements and
modifications. Students must also critically reflect on the problem solving
methods used and the actions performed throughout the whole process. They
must make various connections between the problem, the needs of those
affected by it, their own needs, the solution, potential outcomes, actual
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outcomes, etc. The making of such connections is reasoning, which is creative,
critical and caring.
Thus, social reconstruction learning necessitates that students facilitate the
various types of thinking and reasoning skills that are P4Cs educational aims.
Most importantly it necessities the practical aspect of inquiry that the P4C
overlooks. As Lipman and Dewey agree, inquiry is the means for meaningfully
reconstructing problematic situations. Thus, inquiry has little value without this
practical component. In fact, inquiry devoid of practice isnt inquiry at all
because it isnt reconstructive and thus doesnt produce meaning. Thus,
philosophical ideas that arent applied lack the fundamental value and meaning
of solutions applied to reconstruct real social problems of concern to students.
Finally, since social reconstruction learning actually requires students to use
inquiry skills to create real social change, their value beyond the classroom COI
is made apparent. This in turn motivates students to use and develop them inside
and outside the classroom.
However, even when service learning programs do require students to
construct solutions for themselves, they often fail to fully facilitate good critical
thinking, and thus effective problem solving, because there is no explicit
emphasis on improving thinking. It seems to sometimes be assumed that given
the opportunity to solve real problems, students will automatically develop and
apply the necessary thinking skills. However, the type of thinking necessary for
social reconstruction learning is complex and multifaceted. In order for students
to develop such thinking, specific procedures and pedagogical methods must be
put in place so as to deliberately facilitate it.
The P4C program provides the pedagogical procedures and content needed to
facilitate such thinking skills. Firstly, Lipman and Dewey share to a
Vygotskyian like view of the development of thinking. According to Vygotsky
thinking develops when individuals internalize the procedures and
characteristics of social interaction, including dialogue. This is why Lipman
prescribes a COI, a concept used by Dewey and other pragmatists, as the
pedagogical structure of P4C. In the COI, students and teacher contribute ideas,
understandings, relevant experiences, knowledge, further problems, and
methods, which progress the inquiry towards some type of solution.
Consequently, students must make connections between their own
understandings and those of others, which requires analogical thinking and
drawing inferences. Students must critically compare these alternative ideas,
which requires considering the consequences of various ideas, constructing
counter arguments, asking for reasons and evidence, and assessing arguments,
etc. Furthermore, each students own opinions are exposed to the conflicting
views and criticism of others. This forces students to reflect on their ideas and
methods and support them with reasons, improve them, or self-correct in light of
better alternatives. Students must also make judgments about what ideas are
better, which requires developing criteria on which to base judgments. Students
and teachers facilitate such critical thinking and reasoning through constantly
and carefully questioning each other and requesting explanations and reasons
before any ideas are tentatively accepted.
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Good thinking requires a critical awareness of ones own thinking in order to
evaluate whether its sound and effective or in need of improvement. P4C
promotes metacognition in several ways. Philosophy (particularly logic and
epistemology), provides an invaluable metacognitve language and set of tools
for discussing and thinking about thinking itself. Such tools enable students to
construct criteria, which can then be used to critically evaluate their own
thinking and the thinking of others.
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4. Reflection
Students must also reflect upon their own thinking, as well as their actions and
experiences so as to make connections between social problems, the application
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of solutions, and the consequences. The making of such connections is what
makes the experiences coherent, meaningful and valuable. However, many
service learning programs fail to encourage authentic reflection. The
discouragement of critical reflection could also be a mechanism to conceal the
futility of some of the activities they are required to perform in response to
complex social problems. However, since social reconstruction learning is
focused on reconstructing problems, students must reflect on their practice in
order to know if they have been successful, and to identify further action needed
in order to improve, reinforce and progress the intended social change. In
service learning that is not focused on reconstruction students often assume of
the success of their actions and consequently reflection isnt necessitated.
Emphasizing the importance of reflecting on the success of reconstructive
practice could have negative effects on students self-esteem if their solutions
are unsuccessful. However, in P4C mistakes, wrong turns and unforeseen
problems dont have the status of punishable offences as they often do in
traditional classrooms. P4C incorporates Deweys epistemology of fallibalism.
Wrong turns, fallacious thinking, problematic solutions and self-correction are
considered essential aspects of the inquiry process.
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Self-correction and
problem seeking are morally desirable attributes because they progress the
inquiry by eliminating bad ideas and indicating improvements, leading to more
perfected ideas and thinking.
However, if students are to perform actions that will affect the greater
community, there must be measures to minimize serious mistakes. Many of the
suggestions made so far help do this, such as selecting manageable problems,
relevant to students own interests and experiences and articulating the problem
well, as well as the facilitation of good, reflective, practical thinking and self-
correction. Furthermore, the Deweyian notions of inquiry and philosophy
involve the testing of solutions in controlled situations. Testing of solutions can
happen within the miniature, community of the classroom or school. Students
can hold practice runs of things and request feedback on them. Role play can
also enable students to act out ideas and possible reactions or consequences.
Students can also trial suggested solutions by putting them to practice as
everyday classroom or school procedures.

5. Intercultural Inquiry

Successful reconstructive practice also requires that the problems investigated
be of concern to the community and that the solutions incorporate the needs and
agendas of all relevant stakeholders.
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Thus, all effected members should be
involved in the articulation of the problem and the construction and application
of a solution. However, many service learning activities are often constructed
and applied without the involvement of those affected by the service. This is
probably because it is assumed that the activities performed benefit those
needing assistance. Thus, there is really no need to ask the recipients for their
input. Excluding those affected often causes the practice to be ineffective. As
J anie Ward argues, this is particularly problematic when those affected by the
social problems have cultures or backgrounds very different from the students.
This is often the case. Ward argues that as a consequence of students not
interacting with such communities, their practice is often based on
unexamined, preconceived, assessments of the community and the
characteristics and needs of its residents.
19
Preconceived assessments are
likely to be misconceptions, ethnocentric biases and even derogatory.
20

Consequently the services and actions students perform will fail to meaningfully
reconstruct the problem and benefit the community, whose needs and problems
they fail to really understand.
Ward argues, that service learning programs that lack interaction between
students and the greater community often facilitate hierarchical, problematic
relationships. To quote Ward This I give/they receive orientation to the
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helping relationship often betrays a better than/less than dynamic that impedes
the development of real caring relationships.
21
This giver/receiver relationship
correlates with self/other, subject/object and active/passive dualisms. The
receiver is seen as a passive, object of charity. They are denied any subjectivity
and agency because they arent allowed to make any contribution to meeting
their own needs and the needs of their community. Since this is an
unreciprocated relationship, the giver remains relatively unaffected by the other
and is able to impose their preconceived meanings on them.
Thus, effective social reconstruction requires a COI that extends beyond the
classroom and includes all members of the community that are affected by the
problem. Such a COI would be what Linda Flower calls an intercultural
inquiry, in which students and those they are assisting jointly articulate the
problem and construct a solution through a critical, caring, communal inquiry.
22

Such an inquiry enables the construction of more inclusive and objective
meanings through the sharing and interaction of the needs, perspectives, ideas
and experiences of all diverse stakeholders. Furthermore, students would be
required to interact with the differently situated others who could challenge and
correct their misconceptions and students aware of their own situatedness. As
both Lipman and Dewey claim, its this type of problematizing of ones
experiences and beliefs through social interaction that leads to inquiry, the
construction of new meanings and personal growth. Thus, service learnings
ability make students interact with diverse people and cultures assists P4Cs
facilitation of reflective, critical thinking and self-correction. However, the
more diverse a COI is, the more potential is has to be adversarial and hostile.
The P4C promotes the dispositions and procedures required for collaborative,
intercultural inquiry through its emphasis on empathy, open-mindedness, self-
correction, reasonableness, and care for others and their ideas, as well as for the
procedures of inquiry. Reasonableness is the capacity to be affected by others
reasons, as well as to provide reasons so as to persuade others.
23
Open-
mindedness involves being open to the possibility of alternative perspectives.
Empathy means being able to understand where another is coming from by
stepping out of our own feelings, perspectives, and horizon and imagining
ourselves instead as having the feelings, perspective, and horizon of another.
24

The COI also facilitates the caring attitude that is required when different
individuals share, critique and develop each others ideas and experiences while
maintaining open lines of communication.
25
Such attitudes and procedures
enable participants to transform their individual ideas into new, more objective
meanings, inclusive of everyone involved. Without them the COI could not
operate as people would be unwilling to risk sharing their thoughts and would
be unmoved by different perspectives. Its for these reasons that participants
care about and consciously develop these procedures and attitudes.
Consequently, an intercultural COI eradicates the potential for a hierarchical
giver/receiver relationship. All those affected by the social problem are active
subjects who provide essential knowledge, ideas, and skills. Accessing these
resources requires students to connect to those they are assisting by being
respectful, empathetic, caring and open-minded. Students also facilitate
reflective thinking and reasoning in those they are assisting by engaging in
conjoint action-inquiry with them. Thus, all the participants in an intercultural
COI are actually mutually dependent on each other for the articulation of the
problem, the construction of a solution to the problem, as well as for their own
growth. Thus, in an intercultural COI students can help the recipients to help
themselves, and vice versa.

6. Summary

P4Cs lack of practicality means that its unable to fully facilitate the
development of the Deweyian ideals of inquiry and meaningful learning that it
intends to. Thus, I have attempted to reconstruct P4C by combining it with
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social reconstruction learning, which is a Deweyian type of service learning that
focuses on students constructing and applying solutions to real social problems.
Social reconstruction learning requires the types of critical, creative, reflective,
caring and communal thinking and dispositions that P4C aims to facilitate. In
turn, social reconstructive learning provides the practical activities, concrete
problem solving and integrating of school and the greater community that P4C
needs in order to fulfill its stated educational goals. Thus, the practical P4C
Program, which integrates P4C and social reconstruction learning, can best
facilitate the educational goals of both P4C and service learning, by emphasizes
the integration of inquiry and practice, concrete social problems and
philosophical problems, and the school and community.


1
Matthew Lipman Thinking in Education (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 208
2
J ennifer Bleazby, Practicality and Philosophy for Children, Critical
and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy of
Education, November (2004).
3
J ohn Dewey, Democracy and Education [Mineola: Dover Publications,
2004 (1916)], 310.
4
For example Madeleine M. Kunin, Service Learning and Improved
Academic Achievement: The National Scene, in Service Learning,ed.
J oan Schine (Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education
1997), 149-159.
5
J oseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer, In the Service of What? The
Politics of Service Learning, Phi Delta Kappa (Bloomington, Vol. 77,
No. 9, 1996), 2.
6
Kahne and Westheimer, p. 2
7
Dewey, 279-289.
8
J ohn Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt &
Company, 1938), 104.
9
Laurence Splitter and Anne M. Sharp, Teaching for Better Thinking
(Melbourne: Acer, 1995), 66.
10
Splitter and Sharp, 79-83.
11
Splitter and Sharp, 112.
12
Splitter and Sharp, 11.
13
Kahne and Westheimer, 4.
14
As cited in Kahne and Westheimer, p.4.
15
Lipman, 21.
16
Splitter and Sharp, p. 90.
17
Lipman, 123.
18
Roger Holdsworth, Schools that Create Real Roles of Value for
Young People, Prospects (vol. XXX, no 3, September 2000), 355.
19
J anie Victoria Ward, Encouraging Cultural Competence in Service
Learning Practice, in Service Learning, ed. J oan Schine (Chicago: The
National Society for the Study of Education, 1997), 140.
20
Ward, 144.
21
Ibid.
22
Linda Flower, Intercultural Inquiry and Transformation of Service,
College English (Urbana: vol. 65, no. 2, Nov, 2002), 1.
23
Lipman, 21-22.
24
Lipman, 269.
25
Splitter and Sharp, 19.
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