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Unesco Meeting

Paris, March 1998

A report by Michel Sasseville, President of ICPIC (International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children).

Invited as experts by Unesco to present what is done in the field of Philosophy for children, we have been asked to propose a certain number of recommendations concerning an eventual Unesco project on Philosophy for Children. At least, that was the title of the agenda. What UNESCO wanted was a kind of picture of what different people coming from different backgrounds have to say concerning the teaching of philosophy, the doing of philosophy with children, the relationship between philosophy and children, the different models that exist concerning this large topic. I think it was really interesting even though in some cases, I felt for example that we were far away from the idea of the community of inquiry as a pedagogical methodology to introduce philosophy to children. But, the point of this meeting was not to buy P4C or to sell it, but to expose to UNESCO what is done in this new field of education and philosophy. And, for this reason, a certain number of people around the table were totally unknown by those who are using the Community of Inquiry to introduce philosophy to children. And, these people, from what I understood, didn't know too much about this idea too.

At the end, we as a group (we were around 15 people) finally proposed five recommendations to the director of the section of Philosophy and Ethics that could combine the different perspectives presented during the two days of the meeting.

These five recommendations are:

In order to launch a project on philosophy for children, UNESCO should:

1. help in the publication of philosophical documents addressed to children;

1. foster philosophical activities with children ;

1. promote colloquium and exchanges on the topic of Philosophy and children that will give the possibility to confront different experiences;

1. promote the presence, the development and the extension of the teaching of philosophy in secondary schools;

5. promote the philosophical training of teachers of primary and secondary schools.

I hope this short report will give you a picture of what happened during these two days in Paris. I have to confess that I was expecting more from this meeting. I guess I misunderstood the aim of this meeting, maybe because of the title of it: UNESCO project on philosophy FOR children.

When I saw the title, I thought that it was about what we are all or almost all generally doing, and for some since many many years, that is using the Community of Inquiry methodology. But, after all, we can do philosophy with children in different ways. If this meeting can contribute to the development of this new field in Education and in Philosophy, I think it is good. These two days gave me also the possibility to see again that members of ICPIC are very hard workers and that we have very good expertise in this field on local, national and international level. In other words, we have done already a lot compared to some others who seem (at least it was my impression) to be at the beginning. But, of course, everyone is welcome to participate to this project of doing philosophy with children, having though this question in mind: how can we do philosophy with children in such a way that it will be good for children? And, asking this question is being engaged in a philosophical inquiry. Two days were not enough, for sure! But we have to start somewhere...

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