Thirty years of P4C: #10 — The founding of SAPERE — Roger’s story

Here, ahead of our conference this coming Saturday celebrating “30 years of P4C in the UK”, Roger looks back on the spark that lit the fire, and takes us on a journey through three decades championing the purposes and practices of philosophy.

“I would not have committed myself to this path if I had not considered it to be a worthy cause. And such a worthy cause it is, I argue ever more strongly.”

I suppose, in retrospect, that I was something of a philosophical learner even at school, over half a century ago. At least, I was particularly interested in, and inquiring into, the meanings and impact of words, if not (in those days) the manifold workings of the world. Latin, English and French A-levels stimulated and largely satisfied this interest. But informal philosophy lessons with an economics teacher were the icing on the cake, and led me on to study Philosophy and French at university.

Of course, those lessons were not P4C as we understand it, but they did ensure a lasting commitment to the purposes and practices of philosophy in its broadest – and I would say, original – sense.

My early teaching career, with younger students, inevitably involved teaching various ‘subjects’, though specialising in English. I then spent ten years teaching maths to secondary students, sneaking in some teaching of philosophy (the ‘subject’) into ‘general studies’ lessons. Whatever I taught, though, I was trying, without fully realising it, to teach philosophically.

I don’t think I could I have articulated at the time, even if I had been asked, what teaching philosophically was. It took a career turn, and a BBC documentary, to begin my journey towards what I now confidently promote as (the 6 strands of) Philosophical Teaching-and-Learning.

The career turn actually came just before the documentary. I had already decided to stop being a maths teacher, and was ready for a new vocation, even outside of the education system. Then (almost by chance) I watched the documentary Socrates for 6-year Olds, and it changed the course of my life – as it did for many other viewers at the time. Indeed, because of the efforts of some of those viewers in particular, it has had a remarkable knock-on effect on the lives of countless others since, not least many of those involved in the other stories in this “30 years of P4C” series.

It was when I heard Matthew Lipman say, “If you could get education to centre on thinking rather than rote learning, then you’re preparing for a very different kind of world”, that I found my own new vocation. I went over to New Jersey to check out the IAPC (Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children) and to learn as much as I could from Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp and their colleagues. I returned to link up with Will Robinson, an early proponent of P4C in the UK, and advisor to the BBC after the documentary had prompted over 2000 enquiries.

Will and I also teamed up with Bob Fisher, then-Director of the Thinking Skills centre at what became the Twickenham campus of Brunel university, to run a conference there with Lipman as the keynote speaker. This was in the summer of 1991. After this conference, Steve Williams, Sara Liptai, Karin Murris and Chris Rowley joined us in forming a core group, which coordinated the network that became the Society for Advancing Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education (SAPERE), and subsequently a charitable society.

During the next 10 years, SAPERE established itself as a viable (if quiet) contributor to the educational discourse and provision in the UK, and over the following 10 years it became, by most standards, the leading organisation in the world for training teachers in P4C.

But this is not intended as a history of SAPERE – even though it is hard for me to separate my own story from that of the society. I just want to mention two other people who were vital to its success. The first is Lizzy Lewis, who became the first employee of the charity in the 2000s. She set the tone of the society, especially in its collaborations with hundreds of teachers, and represented its values to such good effect that she was elected President of ICPIC (International Council of Philosohpical Inquiry with Children) in 2013. The other is Will Ord, who succeeded Will Robinson, and then myself, as Chair of the society, and selflessly enabled it to grow in many ways.

So, back to the main story… It is fair to say that P4C has been a dominant feature of my life since those early 90s, not least because I have earnt my living as a freelance trainer in P4C and Thinking Skills (which I now present as Thinking Moves). But, given the challenges of freelancing and the effect they can have on one’s personal life and leisure, I would not have committed myself to this path if I had not considered it to be a worthy cause. And such a worthy cause it is, I argue ever more strongly.

Humanity faces many and growing challenges – perhaps even existential ones. No doubt more specialist (‘subject’) knowledge and general knowledge will be needed by everyone, not least younger generations, in meeting those challenges. But knowing how best to acquire and use knowledge – aka wisdom – will be even more important. As Einstein said, in Out of My Later Years, “the development of the general ability for independent thinking and judgement should always be placed foremost … not the acquisition of special knowledge” – a quote worthy of Lipman himself.

This is what P4C means to me, captured so well in its 4Cs: caring, collaborative, creative and critical thinking. I shall continue to promote this approach to education – and to life – even whilst recognising that it is a high calling, to which one’s all-too-human response will always fall short.