Walter Kohan

This book explores the idea of a childlike education and offers critical tools to question traditional forms of education, and alternative ways to understand and practice the relationship between education and childhood. Engaging with the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Simón Rodríguez, it contributes to the development of a philosophical framework for the pedagogical idea at the core of the book, that of a childlike education.Divided into two parts, the book introduces innovative ideas through philosophical argument and discussion, challenging existing understandings of what it means to teach or to form a child, and putting into question the idea of education as a process of formation. The first part of the book consists of a dialogue with a number of interlocutors in order to develop an original conception of education. The second part presents the idea of a childlike education, beginning with a discussion of the relationships between childhood and philosophy, and followed by a critique of the place of philosophical experience in a childhood of education. Instead of asking how philosophy might educate childhood, this book raises the question of how childhood might educate philosophy. It will be of key value to researchers, educators and postgraduate students in the fields of education and the human sciences.

The present text is a childlike exercise in writing. In responding to an invitation to write an adult, academic text, we the authors found that the presence of a child's standpoint acted to change the expressions that were to be elucidated, and that the project that adult writing represents was suspended by the creative force of childhood. "Philosophy for children" became "children for philosophy"; "moral education" became "the end (of) morality" and "conceptions of childhood" became the "childhood of conceptions." As such our text is divided into different sections, in each of which we explore the implications of allowing ourselves to be transformed in our practice by recognition of the child’s voice; the problematization of conventional educational programmatics for one, and the opening of new pedagogical pathways, which recognize childhood as a moving force of thinking, as opposed to an object of study and manipulation. To this end, we engage several interlocutors from different fields--literature, philosophy, education, "philosophy for children", and from chronological children themselves. We conclude by proposing, based on an encounter with the work of H. Cisoux and J. Derrida, that we think about the relations between deconstruction and childhood in such a way that our affirmation of childhood leads to a transformation of the text itself—not only in its content but in its form. As such, we present the reader with a fundamentally childlike text.

Exagerando uma certa tensão existente entre Sócrates e Platão em Diálogos como Apologia de Sócrates, Górgias e A República, este artigo busca pensar uma oposição mais profunda entre duas políticas da educação da infância em nome da filosofia: como conhecimento verdadeiro do bom e do belo (Platão), a filosofia aspira à conversão da infância; como forma de vida questionadora (Sócrates), ela abre um espaço de interrogação para escutar a infância. No artigo, mostramos como o programa Filosofia para Crianças, de Matthew Lipman, parece situar-se do lado de Platão, destacando os impactos de tal postura em relação à força criadora da infância.

Percibimos órdenes dominantes y, a la vez, grietas o discontinuidades en ese mismo orden. Valores, saberes y prácticas imperan en nuestra experiencia al mismo tiempo que fisuras de ese imperio engendran asombros, dudas, moestias. De estos sentimientos se nutre el cuestionamiento y la investigación filosóficos, un intento, al fin, por superar la inmovilidad de aquellos órdenes imperantes. En efecto, la filosofía, en tanto tarea crítica, cuestiona los valores, ideas y creencias que permean las prácticas socialmente dominantes. A la vez, en tanto tarea creativa, la filosofía piensa otros órdenes, alternativos a los imperantes. Las disposiciones y métodos de la filosofía se ejercen sobre toda práctica significativa para desatar su caráter ordinario, rutinario o cotidiano. Se establecen así condiciones de posibilidad para nuevos estados de cosas. En ese doble moviento de poner en cuestión y poner en cuestión y proponer alternativas para un determinado ámbito de la realidad, la filosofía se despliega en un conjunto variado de "filosofías de... ": la mente, el lenguaje, la cultura, la religión, la educación, el deporte, la tecnología, entre otros.

In this paper I introduce some of the main theoretical principles of an educational and philosophical project that is still very much alive and in process. The project Does Philosophy Fit in Caxias? Public School Bets on Thinking is housed in two public schools in the city of Duque de Caxias, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that may be characterized as an urban poverty zone. The project involves philosophizing with students and the creation of a teacher education agenda in which teachers study and practice the art of facilitating philosophical experiences with their students. Created in 2007, it is sponsored by the Center for Philosophical Studies of Childhood at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and includes roughly 20 teachers and 400 students from ages 6 to 70—with the latter as part of an adult literacy class. We have already presented how this project works it some Conferences and publications. This paper presents some of its main theoretical principles, i. e.: “thinking experiences”; “intellectual equality”; “philosophy for children”; “a new policy”.

Some biographical remarks and philosophical questions within philosophy for children -- Celebrating thirty years of philosophy for children -- Good-bye to Matthew Lipman (and Ann Margaret Sharp) -- The politics of formation : a critique of philosophy for children -- Philosophy at public schools of Brasilia, DF -- (Some) reasons for doing philosophy with children -- Philosophizing with children at a philosophy camp -- Does philosophy fit in Caxias? A Latin American project -- Philosophy as spiritual and political exercise in an adult literacy course.

In this paper, we present a compendium of excerpts of Plato´s dialogues on childhood. We have collected the major references to children and childhood through Plato’s opus, and divided them between those categorizations of children which can be as small as phrases which use “child” as an example of a certain kind of disposition or character; and those passages which deal with the education of children. Of course the two books in which Plato speaks most of children and childhood—Laws and The Republic—are both devoted in varying degrees to systematic education, and space does not permit us to include any but the most salient elements of his very broadly conceived scheme, which naturally extends backwards into the procreation of children, and before that, the management of union between the sexes, and the purposes of procreation. As for Plato’s attitude towards children, we will leave the reader to evaluate that, but we offer several questions: 1) What does Plato’s view of childhood imply about his view of adulthood? 2) Can Plato be understood to have held views of childhood any different from his contemporaries? 3) What are the political implications of Plato’s views of childhood—especially given his frequent association of children with women, slaves, and the “ignorant multitude”? 4) What do Plato’s views of childhood matter to his philosophy as a whole? 5) And finally, what do they matter to the understanding of children as philosophers themselves?