Children and Philosophy

With World Philosophy Day fast approaching (Thursday 20th November), we want to encourage as many people as possible to try out some philosophy in their classrooms or at home.

Give it a go – and if you need resources try the free ones we have available, or buy Brandon’s book Weird Philosophy.

Children are natural philosophers. This fact has been impressed upon me anew since I’ve been going into schools to give readings to Years 5, 6 and 7 from my book Weird Philosophy, published earlier this year by Puffin. The 45-minute slots pass swiftly – and not just for me. I think I’m justified in believing time passes equally swiftly for the kids, by the fact that they keep shooting their hands up to ask questions, and the teacher invariably has to guillotine the session while hands are still aloft because we’ve run out of time.

I usually begin by asking, ‘Who knows what philosophy is?’ The near-misses can be as enlightening as the on-target answers. One boy asked ‘Is it a sort of therapy?’ Well, not exactly, but it’s not not therapy. It can be. The Stoics would have said it was.

Another child asked ‘Is it science?’ Again, there’s a touch of truth in this suggestion. Jacques Maritain called philosophy the Queen of the Sciences, meaning that it rules over and validates all the others. It has its own methodologies, like science, and, like science, is concerned (or should be) with finding the truth, or achieving the closest approximation to truth that we can manage.

This question led into a useful discussion of how philosophy explores questions science cannot yet investigate. Questions that can be tackled by making observations, facilitated by microscopes or telescopes, aren’t philosophical questions. ‘What does it mean to be good?’; ‘What is reality?’; ‘What happens when I die?’: none of these is amenable to scientific enquiry. And I find this a helpful definition of philosophy; it’s problems that can’t be solved by science, or, more simply, the study of unanswered questions.

After establishing an idea of what philosophy is, I read out short extracts from the book. Each extract poses a question, for example ‘Does being good make you happy?’ Time and again I’m impressed by how engaged the children are. Here are some of the responses:

• If being good makes you happy, does that mean there are no happy bad people?
• Maybe it does make you happy, because if you’re kind and nice to people, you’ll have more friends
• What does ‘being good’ mean, anyway? People disagree about what’s good
• What is happiness?

Another question I pose (after reading out Zuangzhi’s famous question about how a man dreaming he was a butterfly could know, on awakening, whether he was a wakeful man or a dreaming butterfly) is: ‘How do you know this isn’t a dream?’ Responses:

• You can’t know for sure, because when you’re dreaming you don’t realise it
• Pinch yourself – you can’t feel pain in a dream
• If you can’t tell the difference, does it even matter?
• If this is a dream, it’s quite boring (that one was intended as a joke – I hope)

In response to the question, ‘What makes you the same person throughout your life?’ (after reading out Locke’s Prince and Cobbler thought experiment) I’ve had:

• You have the same DNA
• You have the same mind
• You just know you’re the same person – it’s not the sort of thing you can prove
• I’m not the same person throughout my life – I’m changing all the time

In the last part of the session, I ask whether the children have any questions for me. Hands fly up like rockets. Questions I’ve faced include:

• What’s the meaning of life?
• What’s the point of philosophy?
• Why do philosophers disagree so much?
• How do you get to be a philosopher?
• How much money does a philosopher earn?
• What football team do you support?

That last one comes up at every single event – always asked by a boy – and though it might seem off the subject, it can lead to fruitful questions in the philosophy of sport: Why do we support football teams? Why do the performances of athletes we don’t know and who don’t know us mean so much? Why do we feel such loyalty towards our team? You can change your name, your religion, your nationality, but nobody ever changes their football team – why not?

Discussing philosophy with children is unfailingly stimulating – and it can be as educative for the adult as for the child.

Brandon Robshaw’s Weird Philosophy, an accessible and humorous introduction to philosophy for children aged 9-12, is out now in Puffin.