Thirty years of P4C: #3 Felix and Ben – a virtuous circle of P4C

In 2009 The Philosophy Foundation (TPF) set up a philosophy afterschool club. We weren’t sure if anyone would want to come, even though our school-time philosophy sessions were popular. (It’s a no-brainer when philosophy is up against literacy or numeracy, but far from a foregone conclusion when up against football club or computer games club!) The ‘Phi club’ was – to our surprise – over-subscribed.

We gained permission to film these sessions and, ever since, we have used clips of these films for training purposes. Hundreds of people have viewed these films as part of our Stage 1 training course for those wishing to learn how to facilitate philosophical enquiries in schools. The clips are deal-closers for anyone still unsure about whether children can really do philosophy. It’s always great to watch the faces of the attendees as they witness primary aged children (between 8 and 11-years-old) deliver – among other things – valid syllogisms and an infinite regress reductio ad absurdum argument. They are always surprisingly and unequivocally impressed.

One day, one of the attendees was a 21-year-old version of one of the children from the film clips; a grownup Felix Kita-Mears. He had gone on to study philosophy as a direct result – according to him – of doing philosophy with us 10 years earlier, and now he was looking to train with us to be able to work in schools himself. We, of course, gave him a heads-up about the fact that he was about to watch himself on the course and we offered to use a different clip. He was a little embarrassed but magnanimous enough not to ask us to change the course-material. His comment, after watching us show him off and his classmates, was that he had no idea, at the time, that what he and his classmates were saying was of any philosophical interest at all. Watch this video to decide for yourself!

Around the same time, Ben Walker got in touch to undergo our training. He was also a prior student of mine when I did philosophy at Eliot Bank Primary School, the first school I ever did philosophy at back in 2002. He remembered the philosophy I did with him (and he was in one of the first classes I ever did philosophy in!) and, just as Felix did, he went on to study philosophy as a degree. (Watch a video of Ben philosophising.)

We are often asked about the impact we hope to make with the children we work with and about any impacts we do in fact make (or fail to make!). Well, with Felix’s and Ben’s stories I am able to report a direct and very tangible impact the philosophy we do in schools at The Philosophy Foundation has had on at least two of the children we have worked with: I think it safe to say that the impact on Ben and Felix was life-changing.