This week’s issue has the theme of children and adults, what adults can learn from children and the question, “When do you stop being a child?”
It was prompted by a new paper in Think!, by our friends Emma Swinn at SAPERE and Stephen Campbell-Harris, “The Myth of Growing Up: How Childlike Traits Benefit Adults”. Lots of interesting stuff, but it would be worth reading just for the Japanese concept of ‘shoshin’ or ‘beginner’s mind’ which is a golden idea.
The differences between children and adults are an interesting question for children to philosophise about – here’s a dialogue from 2013 between then Year 7 and 8s at Mayflower and Billericay Schools. They should all be adults by now, whatever their criteria were!
This week’s issue has the theme of children and adults, what adults can learn from children and the question, “When do you stop being a child?”
It was prompted by a new paper in Think!, by our friends Emma Swinn at SAPERE and Stephen Campbell-Harris, “The Myth of Growing Up: How Childlike Traits Benefit Adults”. Lots of interesting stuff, but it would be worth reading just for the Japanese concept of ‘shoshin’ or ‘beginner’s mind’ which is a golden idea.
The differences between children and adults are an interesting question for children to philosophise about – here’s a dialogue from 2013 between then Year 7 and 8s at Mayflower and Billericay Schools. They should all be adults by now, whatever their criteria were!
The differences are also an important question for us as pedagogues. Part of the attraction of philosophy for children for children is that it feels like a grown-up thing to do. Serious subjects are discussed and what you think gets taken seriously. There’s a more equal relationship between children and teacher, with the teacher’s views no longer taking centre stage.
P.S. To share a bit of my own educational and wider philosophy, I think society as a whole suffers from thinking of playful and serious, children and adults, as opposites, with serious adults setting the standard. It does a huge disservice, especially to teenagers who miss out on a lot of play through imposing false standards of maturity on one another. When given the chance, they enjoy the games and imagination they have left behind and, like nearly everything, are actually rather better at it than their younger selves. Part of the appeal of RPGs such as the Dungeons & Dragons classes we offer at www.p4he.org is that “permission to play”.
For me, playfulness and seriousness are two ways of being committed to an activity, “locked in” in recent slang, rather than only giving it half your attention – they both have the same opposite, which is something like indifference. As Nietzsche puts it, “’Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.’
My own approach to philosophy for children, and all the other work I do whether with children or adults, is to model and encourage that commitment to whatever we’re thinking about, modulating between playfulness and seriousness all the time; and there’s little difference between how I work with children and how I work with adults. Adults feel enlivened rather than patronized and children feel respected.
What’s Happening in the Philosoverse
Jason has been working on some resources for the publishers of Darren Chetty’s new picture book, “I’m Going to Make a Friend”. He’s also been on duty at Hidden Leaders running a taskmaster-themed teambuilding session for staff at Headstart, who provide care for children – using activities tried and tested with teenagers, rather proving the point in the above P.S.
Alongside preparing for a summer-term of Hidden Leaders bookings, Tom has returned to Saint Christina’s school in North London to run an INSET on metacognition, oracy and critical-thinking. He is working on some extra sections to our book Help Me Find My Voice to support stutterers and children with particular social anxiety around speaking. And he’s also running the London Marathon this weekend!
Best wishes,
Jason and Tom