Thirty years of P4C: #4 Emma, the slow reveal of the self

Understanding myself is a secret undergoing a slow reveal – and I am 45 years in. It is no secret to myself that I am an introvert and enjoy my own company, peace and quiet, thought and privacy. Yet, I am also learning that I can thrive on building and facilitating new virtual communities of philosophical enquiry (initially in response to the pandemic), thus blurring my usually unrevealed home-self with my work-self in a way I never expected.

I daringly entered a virtual space with a grid of 12 boxes filled with people I had not met before from across the UK and as far as Turkey, and what we discovered as an emerging community over the course of 3 weekly 4-hour sessions, is that we revealed and discovered more than we intended; we revealed not only our homes, but our thoughts, perspectives, emotions and our care for one another – all through philosophical dialogue.

I have facilitated many philosophical enquiries during the last 18 years: in the Primary classroom where I taught for 12, in my local community when I started a philosophy group that met in a pub, and more recently in my role as a SAPERE P4C Trainer. Usually, these communities are formed face-to-face, but during the pandemic I took the step to cultivate a caring, collaborative, creative and critically thinking community using unmute buttons, virtual circles to offer thoughts, or a thumbs up to indicate a wish to offer a reflection on progress, from a small room in my house.

Indeed, facilitating a dialogue about questions such as, ‘Why do people find it hard to accept?’ unlocked thoughts and connections in our community that weren’t hidden or concealed consciously, but had now found an opportunity to be articulated. A community had formed and transformed in a way I hadn’t anticipated and along the way I had understood a little more about myself too – a revelation I truly welcomed the arrival of into that small room, with a closed door at the back of my house.