Skip to main content
Log in

Can Deweyan Pragmatist Aesthetics Provide a Robust Framework for the Philosophy for Children Programme?

  • Published:
Studies in Philosophy and Education Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience, should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children (PFC) programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children (aged 6–18) improve their ability to become more conscious of and make judgments about the aspects of their experience that have ethical, aesthetic, political, logical, or even metaphysical meaning. Although an international success, the PFC programme has attracted many criticisms from a variety of directions. I claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement coming from religious and social conservatives, educational psychologists, critical theorists, postmodernists/posthumanists, and professional philosophers themselves. The goal of this paper is to offer in a preliminary fashion the basic elements of Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which was principally elucidated in his Art as Experience, to defend PFC as a viable pedagogy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The Topping and Trickey study from central Scotland (the Clackmannanshire study) is considered an international benchmark for evidence on the positive impact of a thinking skills intervention involving collaborative interactive dialogue. The Clackmannanshire study aimed to test whether a weekly session (1 h per week) of “a ‘critical and productive’ thinking programme [Philosophy for Children], characterized by a verbal cognitive focus and high self-regulated peer interactivity developing from initial teacher scaffolding” (Topping and Trickey 2007, p. 273) could lead to “significant gains in measured verbal cognitive ability [as well as] generalization to nonverbal and quantitative reasoning ability” Trickey (2007). The researchers unequivocally answer in the affirmative. They claim that such an intervention is successful because PFC has all the elements in place for transfer or generalization of learning to take place: “[c]onsidering both Lipman’s general conceptualization of P4C and its operation in this study, many of the elements suggested by theoretical modelling as likely to foster generalization seem to be present. Investigation involves hypothesizing and questioning. Enquiry involves developing problem-solving skills and strategies. Knowledge is constructed in a social environment involving peer modelling and disclosure, with interaction rules to protect and enhance participant self-esteem.

    Reasoning involves ordering and coordinating what has been discovered, discerning the structural similarities of diverse problems and developing translational skill in extending this relational conceptualization to new contexts. The summarization and process feedback component is designed to promote meta-cognition and enhance self-regulation” (p. 276). Furthermore, Haynes (2008) remarks that “[w]hether in rural, suburban or inner city areas, in Wales, Scotland and England, recent studies have added to the growing and international body of evidence that philosophy with children is an intervention that can demonstrate academic and social gains for children across a wide spectrum of ability and background. Inspection and research reports refer to school ethos, to pupils’ social and moral development, to increased independence of thought, and to using a range of learning skills and strategies” (p. 163). As is clear from the research studies cited here, the explanation of the success of PFC and its tributaries is given based on cognitive grounds. The goal of this paper is to suggest a pragmatist framework that envelops the cognitive phase of experience within a larger and more encompassing existential whole. This whole is first and foremost constituted by “the essential sociality of human beings” (Bernstein 2010, p. 72) and is not the experience of an isolated individual with its personal state of internal cognitive operations.

  2. As Vansieleghem and Kennedy (2011) assert, Philosophy for Children should be envisaged “not so much as a totality, but rather as an assemblage of moving elements that forms a particular horizon—and thus as ‘some-thing’ that is in movement and can turn toward thought” (p. 172). Despite the fact that in this article I do focus on one particular author, viz. Matthew Lipman as the founding figure of the movement and one of his texts, Lisa, the analysis provided here applies to PFC as a “horizon” formed by a medley of groups, approaches, and practices. For instance, Paul Cleghorn’s Thinking through Philosophy (TTP) programme (2004) in Scotland has a three-pronged approach to “philosophy with children.” According to Cleghorn (2004), TTP is not merely a thinking skills programme aiming to develop “information handling, enquiry, reasoning, creative thinking, and evaluation” skills but also includes efforts to strengthen emotional intelligence (EQ)—“self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills”—as well as spiritual intelligence (SQ)—“the ability to have visions and values, seeing holistically, being able to work against convention, spontaneously adaptive,” etc. Creative Philosophizing with Children (CPC) from Germany (Calvert 2007), where the focus is on creative thinking rather than logical-analytical discursive thought and on the heuristic role metaphor and fables play, is another element contributing to the dynamism of the PFC horizon. Dialogues with Children, Gareth Matthews’ approach to the discourse on Philosophy for Children, is another major contribution to the field and focuses on the child as someone who can ask and reflect on compelling questions with equal force as adults (if not more so). “Logical thinking skills are not emphasised in this approach, or even the discovery of inconsistencies or contradictions in ideas, but rather philosophy as a form of desire—of the opportunity for children to explore and articulate what they have not said or even thought before” (Vansieleghem and Kennedy 2011, p. 176). Philosophy for Children conceived as a dialogical participatory mechanism (Barrow 2010), on the other hand, directs attention to existing power relations, mostly invisible, and how they can be acknowledged and addressed through cultivation of critical reflexivity.

    In the ensuing analysis, I have opted for a close reading of a Lipman text since some of the criticisms levelled at PFC is informed by postmodern arguments that interpret the analytic-pragmatist orientation of the traditional (or first-generation) PFC programme—Lipman is considered first-generation—as being too restraining and neglectful of the complexity of human modes of being-in-the-world. It is argued that there is too much emphasis on critical thinking skills based on the application of logical operations, which ultimately lead to, methodologically speaking, “a form of Western epistemological colonisation” (Weber 2011, p. 237) excluding and even suppressing alternative approaches to pedagogy. I argue, however, that rethinking PFC from the mature phase of Deweyan pragmatism with its focus on consummatory aesthetic experience will give us a framework capable of addressing these criticisms fruitfully. The basic tenor of the argument of this paper is to claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement.

  3. Weber (2011), for instance, criticizes the tendency in PFC circles to put a certain form of subjectivity—“perfectly reflexive and rational self”—on a pedestal seldom questioning how this ideal leads us to treat humans as “disembodied rational brains” when a more complex image of humanity—“the human as sensuous, embodied and passionate”—is required to disclose “the full potentiality of being human” (p. 236). To remedy this situation and address the limitations of the pragmatist and analytic traditions, she offers Schiller’s anthropology in its effort to unify reason and passion “in the sensitivity of embodied life” (p. 236). Her compelling and insightful analysis, however, fails to address Deweyan pragmatism in its mature form. Deweyan consummatory aesthetic experience discloses the human experience to be sensuous, embodied and passionate, not to mention “the pre-linguistic animal origins of meaning in Dewey’s work and why such a starting place remains important to the comprehension of all meaning, including especially the most exquisite consummatory aesthetic experiences” (Garrison 2011, p. 302).

  4. Note on citations to Dewey’s works: Standard references to John Dewey’s work are to the critical edition, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991), and published as The Early Works: 1882–1898 (EW), The Middle Works: 1899–1924 (MW), and The Later Works: 1925–1953 (LW). I adopt the following formula in referring to pages in the standard edition of his works: for example, “Experience and Education, LW13: 13” means that the quoted passage is on page 13 of a book-length work comprising Volume 13 of The Later Works. Similarly, for instance, “The Meaning of Value,” LW1: 74–75 means that the quoted passage is on pages 74 and 75 of an essay from volume 1 of The Later Works.

  5. Lisa is a sequel to Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery and focuses upon ethical and social issues such as fairness, naturalness, lying and truth-telling, and the nature of rules and standards. Other issues explored include the rights of children, job and sex discrimination, and animal rights. Lisa is concerned with the interrelationship of logic and morality. The curriculum helps students establish good reasons in justifying their beliefs as well as in justifying certain departures from normal patterns of conduct” (Lipman et al. 1980, p. 53). These philosophical novels are used as a stimulus to prompt a dialogue among students using open-ended questions. As Lipman et al. (1980) indicate, the novels “offer models of dialogue, both of children with one another and children with adults. They are models that are non-authoritarian and anti-indoctrinational, that respect the values of inquiry and reasoning, encourage the development of alternative modes of thought and imagination, and sketch out what it might be like to live and participate in a small community where children have their own interests yet respect each other as people and are capable at times of engaging in cooperative inquiry for no other reason than that it is satisfying to do so” (p. 105).

  6. “Philosophical novels are nothing new in the history of Western literature, but those for children are, and especially those which contain not one name of a philosopher, living or dead, and those which, through narrative, reformulate the classic philosophical issues as the fundamental questions of human meaning which they represent. By embedding the central philosophical questions of the Western tradition in narrative—for the most part in conversations and dialogues between children and between children and adults—Lipman and Sharp have effectively released the tradition from the grip of academic experts and freed it to re-enter public life” (ICPIC 2004).

    The Philosophy for Children novels and manuals favour “the story over the textbook as stimulus, because the latter tends to understand itself as a book of answers, and the former a provoker of questions. The textbook assumes that the question has already been asked, and thus suppresses it. Any question it might pose is a rhetorical one—a question to which the answer is already known. The philosophical novel, because it is a narrative as opposed to an expository text—makes it possible to represent the multivocal, dialogical and non-linear, contextually situated practice of group deliberation. It can portray the inquiry process through character, plot and dialogue, ‘the way we think when we inquire’, as Lipman (2003 p. 85) puts it. The narrative can be so constructed that it assumes nothing, or at least seeks to identify and question its own assumptions. It can dramatize the emergence of questions, and the dialogue that those questions trigger. And the Lipmanian manuals that accompany the novels are, at base, simply lists of questions about the concepts that are highlighted in the novels, aimed at triggering and enhancing critical dialogue” (Kennedy and Kennedy 2011, p. 273).

References

  • Alexander, T. M. (1987). John Dewey’s theory of art, experience, and nature: The horizons of feeling. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, T. M. (1993). The human eros. In J. J. Stuhr (Ed.), Philosophy and the reconstruction of culture: Pragmatic essays after Dewey (p. 203). Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, T. M. (2003). Between being and emptiness: Toward an eco-ontology of inhabitation. In W. J. Gavin (Ed.), In Dewey’s wake: Unfinished work of pragmatic reconstruction (pp. 129–158). Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrow, W. (2010). Dialogic, participation and the potential for philosophy for children. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 5, 61–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, R. J. (2010). The pragmatic turn. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biesta, G. (2011). Philosophy, exposure, and children: How to resist the instrumentalisation of philosophy in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 305–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burgh, G., & Yorshansky, M. (2011). Communities of inquiry: Politics, power and group dynamics. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43, 436–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calvert, K. (2007). Creative philosophizing with children. Theory and Research in Education, 5, 309–328.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cleghorn, P. (2004). Thinking through philosophy: Book 1. Blackburn: Educational Printing Services.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniel, M.-F., & Auriac, E. (2011). Philosophy, critical thinking and philosophy for children. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43, 415–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1972). The reflex arc concept in psychology. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works (Vol. 5, pp. 1882–1898). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1981). Experience and nature. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works (Vol. 1, pp. 1925–1953). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1982). Philosophy and democracy. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle work (Vol. 11, pp. 1899–1924). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1987). Art as experience. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works (Vol. 10, pp. 1925–1953). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1988). Experience and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works (Vol. 13, pp. 1925–1953). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eames, S. M. (1961). The cognitive and the non-cognitive in Dewey’s theory of valuation. The Journal of Philosophy, 58, 179–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrison, J. (1995). Deweyan prophetic pragmatism, poetry, and the education of eros. American Journal of Education, 103, 406–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrison, J. (2011). Walt Whitman, John Dewey, and primordial artistic communication. Transactions of Charles S. Peirce Society, 47, 301–318.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory, M. (2011). Philosophy for children and its critics: A Mendham dialogue. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 199–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haynes, J. (2008). Children as philosophers: Learning through enquiry and dialogue in the primary classroom (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hickman, L. (2007). Pragmatism as post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ICPIC. (2004). The international council of philosophical inquiry with children. Retrieved from http://www.icpic.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=2.

  • Innis, R. E. (2011). The ‘quality’ of philosophy: On the aesthetic matrix of Dewey’s philosophy. In L. A. Hickman, M. C. Flamm, K. P. Skowroński, & J. A. Rea (Eds.), Continuing relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on aesthetics, morality, science, and society (pp. 43–59). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, J. S. (2002). John Dewey and the role of scientific method in aesthetic experience. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21, 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, D. (1999). Philosophy for children and the reconstruction of philosophy. Metaphilosophy, 30, 338–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, N. S., & Kennedy, D. (2011). Community of philosophical inquiry as a discursive structure, and its role in school curriculum design. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 265–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lipman, M. (1985). Lisa (2nd ed.). Upper Montclair, NJ: IAPC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lipman, M., Sharp, A. M., & Oscanyan, F. S. (1980). Philosophy in the classroom. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathur, D. C. (1966). A note on the concept of “consummatory experience” in Dewey’s aesthetics. The Journal of Philosophy, 63, 225–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Millet, S., & Tapper, A. (2011). Benefits of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools. Educational Philosophy and Theory,. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2010.00727.x.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murris, K. S. (2008). Philosophy with Children, the stingray and the educative value of disequilibrium. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42, 667–685.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robb, M. H. (2005). Temporality, authenticity, democracy: Heidegger and Dewey on the meaning of time, Unpublished doctoral dissertation. The New School University (UMI No. 3184389).

  • SAPERE. (2012). Society for advancing philosophical inquiry and reflection in education: Communities of inquiry. Retrieved from http://www.sapere.org.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=204.

  • Shusterman, R. (2010). Dewey’s art as experience: The psychological background. The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 44, 26–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sofo, F., & Imbrosciano, A. (1991). Philosophy? For children. Educational Review, 43, 283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stankiewicz, S. (2011). Qualitative thought, thinking through the body, and embodied thinking: Dewey and his successors. In L. A. Hickman, M. C. Flamm, K. P. Skowroński, & J. A. Rea (Eds.), Continuing relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on aesthetics, morality, science, and society (pp. 101–118). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Topping, K. J., & Trickey, S. (2007). Collaborative philosophical enquiry for school children: Cognitive gains at two-year follow-up. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 787–796.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vansieleghem, N. (2005). Philosophy for children as the wind of thinking. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 39, 19–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vansieleghem, N., & Kennedy, D. (2011). What is philosophy for children, what is philosophy with children—after Matthew Lipman? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 171–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber, B. (2011). Childhood, philosophy and play: Friedrich Schiller and the interface between reason, passion and sensation. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45, 235–250.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeltner, P. M. (1975). John Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner B. V.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sevket Benhur Oral.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Oral, S.B. Can Deweyan Pragmatist Aesthetics Provide a Robust Framework for the Philosophy for Children Programme?. Stud Philos Educ 32, 361–377 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9332-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-012-9332-5

Keywords

Navigation