history and sense of a project

Abstract

The following lines will tell you a little about the Philosophy in Schools Project. Telling hi/stories is a way of making something be known. So I would like to share some history of the past, some history of the present of the Philosophy in Schools Project, as well as some of the ideas that give sense to its activities. Sharing facts and ideas can also be a way of starting new movements of thought, of inviting people to think about what is not told, about what is only implicitly assumed, about directions it insinuates, about points of proximity and distance in relation to other histories, in relation to the histories that you, the reader, also live and produce. The Philosophy in Schools Project was approved in December 1997 as a community outreach project of the University of Brasilia. This project is happening in different educational contexts throughout Brazil’s Federal District. There are many ways of understanding and practicing philosophy. In the Philosophy in Schools Project we try to live philosophy as a thinking experience. Its objective was and still is the integration of university scholars, students from Philosophy, Education and Psychology courses (the so called “mediators”), and teachers and students from public schools, all through the exercise of philosophy. The Philosophy in Schools Project sees education and philosophy as everyone’s practices and no one’s properties. Transforming education into a product may submit it to private interests and to the market laws. A philosophical education is a common space that receives everyone without charging for their presence. Only by doing so can we meet, not only with different age groups, but also with distinctive realities in order to think together about the world, about what we have become, what we can become.