Tentative blog

Hi Angela and others

This is my first blog ever - haven't been able to prioritise it hitherto.

Thank you for setting it up, however, and for encouraging me to have a go.

I certainly think your earlier posts are worth following up, not least the handy pointers to philosophy programmes on the radio.

I'm not sure about the phenomenon of more boys being interested in p4c than you or their teachers expected, but it may have something to do with the fact that in communities of enquiry pupils/persons (and their thoughts) are taken seriously in a way that often, I fear, they are not, especially in secondary school classrooms, with their syllabus-driven lessons. Everyone likes to be taken seriously, of course, but perhaps especially boys who want to 'be someone' in the world!

As to ideas for working/playing with early years, I think you are on the right track with what you have been doing, and I don't want to give the impression that I know so much better. (In fact, I should rather say, with Socrates, that I know I know rather little!) But I have recently had some success introducing teachers to the use of cartoons, especially The Ugly Duckling and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, so perhaps that another avenue to go down.

Also, you might contact Sara Stanley (author of 'But Why?') for her latest ideas on practice with this age group.

Well, that's all for now, but thanks again for your initiative, and I do hope all continues well with the Wiser Wales project. I shall not be able to attend the network meeting on May 5th, but I wish you a good turnout (and, meanwhile, a Happy Easter!)

P4C with very young children

Hello Everyone,

I hope you're all enjoying the faculous weather, which has actually strangely coincided with time off (for many of you).

In the run-up to the holidays, I've been working with a huge variety of classes. As a secondary trained teacher, working with nursery children has been a welcome challenge and it has been really rewarding to see how well very young children are responding to P4C approaches. I find that fair versus unfair activities work really well and 'would you rather' activities with lots of visual and tactile props. It would be great to get some ideas from any of you who've had experience of doing P4C with very young children. There's lots of debate about whether very young children are able to engage with doing philosophy. I'd love to hear your views on this.