Philosophical conversations in a crisis

“Bravery is to acknowledge the consequences of war and that everything could be taken away from you but what is morally true.”

Anonymous young philosopher from the UK, aged 10

While schools and colleges are still coping with the impact of Covid-19 on attainment, attendance, inequality and mental health, educators must face up to a new crisis in Ukraine.

Among the students that we work with will be those who have first-hand experience of violence and displacement. For a fortunate majority, these dangers remain fears. But in either case, global events like the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia invite us to ask how we should respond to crisis as educators. We consider whether we should open up conversations about topics that are disturbing for some, but may be re-traumatising for others. If we conclude – as I do – that these topics cannot be ignored, we are left with the question of how we should do this.

Over recent weeks I have spoken to various P4C-practising educators about how they have used philosophical dialogue and enquiry to help their students process their complicated thoughts and feelings about the war in Ukraine, while respecting the age and experience of their class, the wishes of parents and carers, and the boundaries outlined in legal guidance and by school leadership. What is obvious of course, is that one approach won’t suit all contexts.

My own approach has been somewhat oblique. Rather than tackling the war in Ukraine directly, without enough awareness of which children know what or how fearful they are, I have chosen to investigate some of the enduring themes that the war raises such as bravery, dread, cowardliness, conscience and moral integrity.

Working online, with a group of 9 to 12-year-olds who I know fairly well, I used a resource about World War 1 which I recently shared for #PhilosophyFriday. I invited the children to consider whether three brothers, conscripted at the beginning of the last century, were brave. As the children’s reflections took shape, some children made parallels with the war in Ukraine. There was no need for me to prompt the issue with pictures or news reports or to explain distressing details. Instead we allowed these parallels to be aired before refocusing the group on our question: Were the brothers in our story brave? Of course, the story was about war, but the distance in time between the children and the story took some of the emotional heat out of the conversation. It became a way to talk about the war in Ukraine without talking about the war in Ukraine.

At the end of the session I told students about an initiative called #PhilosophersForUkraine in which adult philosophers had been invited by a Ukrainian academic to write a philosophical response to the war in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. During the session I consulted the children about their willingness to be part of this and then contacted the parents of the children seeking their permission for us to submit something.

With this aim in mind, the final ten minutes of our enquiry was spent in respectful silence as the children wrote their reflections about feeling paralysed by fear and finding the strength to stand up for what you believe in. They wrote this knowing that these thoughts might be read and taken seriously by others beyond our class – that they may even reach the people in Ukraine for whom questions of bravery are deeply pertinent. In the end, I produced an edited and anonymised transcript of the final moments of our enquiry and submitted it as ‘A message to the people Ukraine from young philosophers from the UK and Ireland’. To my surprise, that transcript was published on the #PhilosophersForUkraine website alongside pieces by some of the world’s most famous grown-up philosophers, among them Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer.

You might think that subjects like this are best avoided for your particular class – and you are probably the best judge of that. After all, they are deeply distressing and difficult topics for learners of all ages to understand, especially very young children. However, I have found in my philosophical work over the last fifteen years that, even when we seek to avoid these subjects, they often find a way of bubbling to the surface anyway.

I am reminded of a series of conversations I had with communities in May 2017 following the Manchester Arena terrorist attack which resulted in the deaths of 22 people. That month, in separate projects across the north of England, I facilitated philosophical enquiries with school children, teachers, museum visitors, artists and academics. For a period, despite the diverse focus of these projects, the topic of the bombing was raised again and again. It found its way into disparate conversations about the value of art and the nature of friendship; it was discussed by very young children and older adults. My enduring impression of this time was that this event had made such an impact on these communities, that they were compelled to explore it philosophically, even when it wasn’t the theme of the event that had brought us together.

What I hope these examples show is that our students’ feelings, thoughts, questions and reflections matter deeply and that philosophical enquiry is a uniquely special space for people to share their responses to a crisis. Only these conversations allow us to ask: what does this tragedy mean for me? But P4C also allows participants to look beyond themselves and to be part of the larger conversations that take place in time of crisis. Whether in the classroom, the community or on a world stage, the voices of our students deserve to be heard. it is our job as educators to protect our students from conversations that may harm them, but we also need to empower them to speak, to listen to others, and to look beyond their own experiences to the problems in the world that they have a stake in.