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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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The Philosopher’s Club
Christopher Phillips
2001 Berkeley: Tricycle Press.
pp. 40 ISBN 1-58246-039-6 (hb) $14.95
Practical Philosophy (Book Reviews) Spring 2002 Volume 4.2
Reviewed by: David Arnaud
In his previous book, Socrates’ Café (reviewed in Practical Philosophy 4.2),
Phillips explained what a Socrates’ Café involves and gave examples of the
kinds of dialogue they produce. Here he provides us with some materials with
which to run a Philosopher’s Club - a Socrates Café for school children.
Phillips provides us with ten topics each with its own chapter. Some of these are perennial philosophical favourites such as ‘Are the mind and brain the same thing?’, ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What is philosophy?’, some revolve around commonly used problematic concepts such as ‘What is violence?’ and ‘What is silence?’ and a couple deal with the old chestnut brain teasers ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ and ‘Is this glass half empty or half full?’.
For all these topics the pattern is the same. First there is a very short dialogue (a paragraph or two at most) on the question to generate some of the issues involved and then a series of roughly ten questions designed to illuminate the main topic. For instance for the ‘What is violence?’ topic the short introductory section suggests that violence is someone hurting someone else on purpose (so planets colliding is not violence), and wonders whether violence always changes things so that perhaps change is a kind of violence. The questions then include ‘What is change?’, ‘Can you do violence to something that isn’t alive?’, ‘Are questions violent?’ and ‘Does violence always do harm?’.
The procedure recommended for using these topics is this. The Philosophy Club should first read the dialogue and then ask the questions that follow. As is traditional with the philosophical inquiry methodology, Phillips, in the reader’s guide you can download from the web, states that children should be encouraged to pose their own questions and bring in their own examples to illustrate answers to the questions. The unexamined concept is not worth using, Phillips maintains, so dialogues should focus on examining the various concepts contained in the questions.
There are now a variety of resources available for practising philosophical inquiry with children. For instance Matthew Lipman, who started the whole movement, originally wrote a series of stories for children to read and discuss and workbooks to provide the teacher with material to use in the discussions, Roger Sutcliffe and Steve Williams have produced worksheets to help children analyse contemporary problems, Karin Murris and Joanna Haynes have produced a guide to using picture books as the basis for philosophical discussions, and Robert Fisher has written a series of books with materials which can be used to promote good thinking about philosophical issues. Phillips’s method, which is perhaps the least structured as it is based on the exploration of a question, provides yet another angle. Anyone wishing now to start a Philosophy Club for children has an embarrassment of riches to choose from.
The book makes bold claims in its introduction about the value of running a Philosopher’s Club. Children ‘who take part regularly in Socratic dialogues develop and hone critical and creative thinking skills … [they] become more autonomous individuals … they learn to make well-reasoned decisions … they are able to ask and answer the most important questions … their sense of self in strengthened … and they are more motivated to develop their abilities in the traditional three Rs’. These claims are indeed bold and if true very important. Those of us engaged in practical philosophy are no doubt primed to look favourably upon them. However Phillips himself provides no justification for these claims.
The book is lovingly illustrated by Kim Doner. However it is
difficult to see what purpose the pictures serve. This is not really a
children’s book in the sense that you might sit down and read it through with
a child looking at the pictures. Nor are the pictures meant to provide a visual
stimulus for the Philosopher’s Club as they do in Murris’s work. The book is
very short and most of it is taken up with these illustrations leaving each
double page with at most thirty words. If you were to sit down and read the book
straight through you would be done in under ten minutes - not of course that you
are meant to do that, but I mention it to indicate just how little written
material there is. I for one would have preferred more thoughts from Phillips
about how to conduct a Philosopher’s Club, more material to conduct one with,
and some reasons and evidence to back up the bold claims about the benefits of
running one. I am left with the feeling that although this book is useful it is
also a missed opportunity to provide something far weightier and more durable.
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