philosophy for children: texts and practice in portugal

Abstract

Philosophy for Children (PfC) stands in an important place inside Practical Philosophy, in virtue of the central role that critical thinking about what is essential in the human activity has in it. In Portugal, there is a significant set of teachers that invest in it, defending principles near Matthew Lipman or articulating others methodologies. This text concerns three of the last books published in the field. The first — Only the dogs talk. Days of abandon (Alice Santos: 2009) — puts together 15 stories that enlarge the equality principle, applying it to non-human animals, following the ethical imperative of Peter Singer. The second book results in the concretization of an application of the Philosophy for Children program project in seven island of the Azorean archipelago. The title is CRIA: A Philosophy for Children Project (Gabriela Castro, Berta Pimentel Miúdo, Magda Costa Carvalho: 2010). The last book is called Play to Think? A Philosophy for Children Manual (Dina Mendonça: 2011) and it is constituted by a set of histories, followed by diverse exercises, useful in the preparation of the PfC sessions. In its whole, the three books show different strategic possibilities, ludicity and creativity, that fits its purpose and addressee, in the context of the community of inquiry. From these readings two questions arise. One is about PfC and literature. Which text can be used as support for the sessions? What can one propose other than the Lipman’s novels? The other question concerns the curriculum configuration of PfC and shows how the three books have adapted Lipman’s and Ann Sharp’s curriculum conception to precise contexts, by selecting various and coherent materials. At the end, for a global and articulated visualization, we transpose in a table the three Philosophy for Children session mounting models, that correspond to the methodological possibilities derived from the individual spared practices