. . . the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder . . .
Josten Gaarder, Sophie’s World
INTRODUCTION
Insofar as education is – or should be – both a moral and critical enterprise, questioning is an essential, albeit often misused, device in the learning process. For the purpose of this discussion, I shall draw a distinction, as I do with my students, between asking and questioning – that is, between interrogation and inquiry, between curiosity and skepticism. While studies demonstrate that teachers typically dominate classroom discourse by asking procedural and fact-based questions designed to elicit recall rather than higher-order thinking skills (Almeida 2012), Seth Godin (2012) duly rejects such “training” as time wasted in a world where information can be readily looked up and memorized. Proponents of Philosophy for Children (hereafter P4C) thus contend that the dialogic encounter between students and teachers should, instead, promote a dynamic, interactive community of inquiry that fosters not the transmission but construction of knowledge and meaning whereby students may learn the value of uncertainty and of being “usefully wrong.”
In stark contrast to the conventional classroom setting – a relic of the Industrial Age which conforms structurally and methodologically with a transmittal model of teaching – the community of inquiry, as conceived by John Dewey (1938) and refined by Matthew Lipman, highlights the social, participatory nature of learning as an intellectual transaction in a wider, more diverse field of experience.
One of the most important advantages of converting the classroom into a community of inquiry (in addition to the improvement of moral climate) is that the members of the community not only become conscious of their own thinking but begin looking for and correcting each other’s methods and procedures. Consequently, insofar as each participant can internalize the methodology of the community as a whole, each participant is able to become self-correcting in his or her own thinking. (Lipman 1988, p. 41)
Like Dewey (1958) and Vygotsky (1978) before him, Lipman views autonomous critical reflection as the product of social interactions and negotiations that occur in communities of inquiry, and P4C as a concomitant “pedagogy of deliberation through classroom dialogue” (Lipman 1999). Constructing knowledge and meaning communally is deemed an ideal of pedagogy by educational theorists for whom inquiry-based learning is the cornerstone of collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking – key competencies in 21st century education. It stimulates sharing, discussion and testing of “big ideas” through engagement with other community members which, in turn, fosters social and moral development as well.
Jen Glaser (2012) draws an important distinction between teaching philosophy as a “history of ideas” and “doing philosophy” – or philosophizing – as “the practice of making sense of our experience and developing a worldview.” Accordingly, for Glaser, the community of philosophical inquiry (hereafter CPI) reinforces Lipman’s notion of intellectual autonomy which students cultivate in a collaborative space “where thinking for oneself happens by participating as a member of a thinking community” (Glaser, pp. 13-14) Arie Kizel (2017, 2020), an outspoken critic of Israel’s education system, similarly observes that doing philosophy with children contributes to their growth and creativity while meeting the need for dialogue and caring behavior through social, cognitive and emotional engagement. As such, P4C obviates the “sage on the stage” model of instruction by transforming the classroom into a student-centered CPI wherein children verbalize and test theories, problematize and critically analyze beliefs and ideas, and learn to embrace uncertainty about complex questions that may not offer a correct or satisfying answer. It is a space, Glaser concludes, “where, after a good discussion, students may not… have their question answered but leave satisfied that they have made progress with it.” Lipman (1999) expounds:
Once they discover that the teacher doesn’t pretend to be an authority about those concepts (e.g., justice, goodness, fairness, etc.), once they can express their opinions (with the understanding that they will be asked for their reasons for holding such opinions), once they can confer with one another without penalties, and once thinking for oneself is considered praiseworthy, the problem is not to get them started but to get them to stop. (p. 23)
This paper recounts the first and penultimate lessons in a four-week philosophy unit I developed for my 8th-grade English class in the fall of 2020. It employs a qualitative, self-study approach to my role as facilitator in our community of inquiry and considers the efficacy of the process and product in honing my students’ thinking and questioning skills as well as their willingness and ability to engage in a collaborative search for answers and meaning. Published studies by proponents of P4C and inquiry-based learning have provided retrospective insight and context to a plan I initially conceived as a module in a broader course of study.
BACKGROUND
The participants in this CPI were fifteen students at the Evelina de Rothschild Upper School for girls in Jerusalem. All had been assessed and assigned to my advanced placement (AP) ability group – most a year earlier, in 7th grade. These students may be characterized as highly motivated, creative thinkers, who perform well academically and participate in a variety of after-school programs, including youth groups, music, art, gymnastics and computer animation. Six students are native English speakers, five are immigrants – or daughters of immigrants – for whom English is their third or fourth language, and the remaining four are Israelis whose mother tongue is Hebrew. Lessons in this ability group are conducted exclusively in English, and language learning is largely a corollary of usage rather than dedicated instruction. The student-centered, interdisciplinary curriculum develops oral and written skills by engaging the girls in activities such as project-based learning, debate, discussions and literary analysis.
When principal emerita, Dr. Beverly Gribetz, asked me to teach this class in the summer of 2019, she underscored their need for a mentor. I saw in them the drive and potential to spearhead the International Communications and Diplomacy major I had wanted to launch at the school since learning of it the summer before and, to that end, I have tailored each year’s curriculum to their abilities and interests with an eye toward honing the cognitive and language skills they will require for the Diplomacy program. Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated adjustments and adaptations in the method of delivery, it neither hindered my plan nor tempered the girls’ enthusiasm. The fall of 2020 introduced them to visual literacy, which focused on inference and messaging in advertising and public awareness campaigns, and our subsequent survey of Aesop’s Fables sought to juxtapose text and personal context by exploring and practicing elements of verbal literacy and nuanced language in fictional and real life situations. These two units prepared the class for our foray into the enigmatic and often mystifying world of philosophy – a journey which, in retrospect, fortunately began on Zoom and was, therefore, recorded and preserved.
THE PROCESS
If asked, my students could readily recite my philosophy of education chapter and verse – or, at the very least, the principles, precepts, quotes and catchphrases that encapsulate it. As an educator, my duty is to challenge, enrich, motivate and guide. As an educator, I am in a position to serve as a role model to my students while providing the tools and confidence they seek to navigate the tortuous path toward adulthood, to formulate, define and articulate their own worldview, opinions and values, and, above all, to inculcate a lifelong disposition to ask and question. As a teacher, I impart the knowledge and furnish the skills they require to do so in English.
Consequently, four years ago, I inaugurated what I call “the conversational classroom” – namely, a learning environment in which a minimum of 20-30 minutes of each lesson are devoted to discussion and deliberation. The prompt might be a quote or a newspaper headline that illustrates a point of grammar or lexical structure I aim to teach, yet it might also be elicited by a student’s impromptu observation. EFL teachers often attribute their reluctance to engage a class in conversation to the difficulty of maintaining order and keeping students from reverting to Hebrew, but I have found that, when the students themselves create the rules of engagement for such dialogic encounters at the beginning of the school year, they are more likely to adhere to them thereafter.
The Socratic method certainly has its place in language pedagogy. I come to conversation classes armed with “wrenches” – questions that are sure to stymie the steady progress of a discussion towards a tidy resolution. Long before I learned of P4C, I had appreciated, perhaps intuitively, that inquiry-based learning cultivates critical thinking, skepticism and resourcefulness. As such, doing philosophy, I surmised, was conducive not only to my role as facilitator, but to stimulating greater intellectual agency and responsibility among my 8th-graders as they sought to participate in the process of discovery, deliberation and problem solving when presented with a question or conundrum they could not simply look up. Topics selected for this unit included Truth, Knowledge, Time, Happiness, Faith and Doubt.
LOVE OF WISDOM
Having unraveled the etymology of “philosophy” on Day 1, the girls were tasked with differentiating wisdom from knowledge and intelligence. What follows is an edited excerpt from their exchange:[1]
Shira: You can be 100 years old and not be wise or 20 years old and wise. It’s not about age, but a state of mind.
Riva: That makes sense.
Naomi: No. I don’t agree. The more you do with your life, the more you gain knowledge. Everything you do affects your life and the way you think. So, the older you are, the more knowledge you gain, and it can change the way you think.
Shira: You can have a lot of knowledge and still not be wise, and be wise without having a lot of knowledge.
TH: Does it work both ways?
Naomi: I don’t think so. You could have a lot of knowledge without being wise, but you can’t be wise without having a lot of knowledge.
(Ada and Ayla agree.)
TH: Riva, what did you want to say?
Riva: I wanted to say that it depends which knowledge and which wisdom we are talking about, because I think there are two types: there’s the historical, mathematics and all the stuff we learn in school, and then there’s experience. And to gain both, you have to be old. And that proves my point.
TH: Interesting. So, would you say that, at your age, you can’t be wise?
Naomi: You can be wise for your age.
Ada: You can, but not as wise as an older person with more experience.
Riva: I can be wise for my age and for ages under me, so I can help out children who are younger than I am.
Naomi: Yeah, exactly. You can be wise for your age no matter how old you are. It’s like, in the category of ‘wise’, it’s when you accomplish everything you wanted in your life and did a lot of things.
TH: Do you think there’s a point when we accomplish everything we want to in our lives?
Riva: Yes….
Naomi: No. That’s why we can never be totally wise.
Ada: No. There’s always something new.
TH: Is that a good thing?
(a collective ‘Yes’.)
Ada: Yes. ‘Cuz you never get bored. You have more to do. You learn new things.
The conversation took an interesting turn when the girls were asked to speculate on Judah ben Teima’s meaning in Pirkei Avot 5:21, “at forty wisdom.” Shay reflected on the maturity required to raise children and offered an unexpected correlation between wisdom and freedom as the group considered Bartenura’s commentary:
Forty [is the age] for understanding: Since after forty years that Israel was in the wilderness, Moshe said to them (Deuteronomy 29:3), ‘And the Lord did not give you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears to hear until this day.’ (Source: Sefaria.org)
Seeing an opportunity to explore this point further by juxtaposing the stories of Exodus and of the four women they had learned about during Black History Month, I asked if slavery is the opposite of freedom and whether one’s mind can be free when her body is not. After some discussion, the group concurred that there are different kinds of freedom – freedom to think, feel, act and believe. The lesson concluded with a brief introduction to Socrates, his trial and death, and Socratic questioning.
TH: What’s the point of asking questions?
Riva: Having an answer.
Shira: I think asking questions is about finding answers… even if you don’t like the answer.
TH: What kinds of questions do you think Socrates might have asked?
Ayla: I think he made people doubt their beliefs – like, if you know God is true.
Shira: Maybe he asked about democracy.
TH: Can questions save a society from self-destruction?
Shira: Of course…. Questions are equal to knowledge and knowledge is a few steps into wisdom.
Naomi: I think questions are self-destruction.
Shira: …I think that, if what we do is right, questions are great. But, if what we do is wrong, questions are bad. I think questions are great.
TH: Are questions self-destructive?
Naomi: Questions are amazing, because there’s always more. But, also, the second you get too deep into questions, there’s no turning back, and the second you start doubting more and more, it’s like, what’s the point of getting up if it’s all a dream, or what’s the point of doing anything if we’re, like, in this world, and nothing’s real….
Shira: Questions help us find meaning.
Naomi: I think that philosophers are amazing that they don’t go crazy…. Every question raises ten thousand more questions.
TH: Dvora, do you think kids make good philosophers?
Dvora: I guess. Yeah. Anyone can make a good philosopher if he knows good questions to ask. It doesn’t matter who’s asking them.
TH: I love that you said that. Should kids be taught to ask questions?
(a collective ‘Yes’)
Dvora: I think kids should first know how to handle the questions and then learn how to ask them. Because if, let’s say, someone asks, ‘What if it’s all just a dream?’ they should first know that, if it [is], they shouldn’t think there’s no point anymore. Otherwise they’ll start doubting, and they might get depressed.
Neta: I think kids don’t need to discuss those things. I think they just need to ask questions.
TH: What kinds?
Dvora: Like politics and stuff.
Ada: Every question raises thousands of others… You have to live and learn.
TH: Would you have liked Socrates, or would he have annoyed you?
Ayla: both
TH: Did today’s lesson annoy you?
Several: No.
Matthew Lipman was right. “The problem is not to get them started but to get them to stop.” And, to be sure, this class was just warming up. By our third session, the girls asked if we could keep doing philosophy through the end of the school year.
QUESTIONING (and) FAITH
Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right questions…Awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions. Epigraph to The Wisdom of Heschel
Although my students were unfamiliar with the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel when we began our journey, they were able, nonetheless, to articulate a definition of philosophy that closely approximated his own. Each new lesson and topic drew in more voices and views, and our community of philosophical inquiry had begun to take shape. My questions were increasingly embraced as puzzles, paradoxes and problems to be worked on rather than worked out.
The cultural and religious diversity that sets Evelina de Rothschild apart from Jerusalem’s other leading schools for girls provides a unique conceptual and experiential context for doing philosophy. Having anticipated that, for some students, questions about religion and faith would introduce an emotional dimension into their thinking and, perhaps, alter the dynamics of their dialogic encounters, I reserved this discussion for the fourth and final week. While I had hoped this topic, which had greater personal implications than any we had tackled to date, would elicit meaningful, probing questions from the girls, most gravitated to God and “Why?”
* Why was the world created in seven days?
* Why did God pick us?
* Why is God still with us after all this time?
Noting the pattern that was emerging, I asked when people usually question their faith.
Yael & Ada: After something bad happens.
TH: To whom?
Several: To them.
With further discussion and deliberation, the group agreed that Jewish philosophy is about faith – or the part of Judaism that deals with questions of faith.
TH: Ada, do we need answers when we ask so many questions about faith?
Ada: No, ‘cuz there are different answers. You may believe in nothing…. I believe in this thing….
TH: And is that OK?
Ada: Yeah. That’s why Hashem brought us to this world. He let us …believe in whatever we want to believe in – to do whatever we want to do.
TH: Free choice?
Yael: Nobody forces us to believe in God.
TH: When we talk about choice, is that a religious or moral question?
Is it OK to question your faith?
Sarah: Sometimes it’s good. When I question [my faith], I want to know more. So, when I ask more, I can know more.
Yael: I’m not sure it’s a good thing that I question faith, because, if I question faith, I’m not sure that God exists… and then, if I question this stuff, I’m not really believing in God, and if I don’t believe in God, it means someone did force me to do that, and I don’t want someone to force me to believe in that.
I left the girls to ponder that last question until our next lesson (on doubt and certainty) and to consider what they know by faith and what by reason. The following parable served to bridge this and our subsequent discussion.
One day, a philosopher was asked to define religion. His answer needed to be definitive, precise – the kind of formula that would satisfy lawyers, or the atheists of his day who sought a clear target at which to aim their critique.
The philosopher was a wise soul and so immediately begged for some time. That period elapsed, and he appeared again. But he didn’t have an answer. Instead, he asked for more time. That period passed too, and he asked for more. And then more. And more.
The people became irritated, annoyed. “If you can’t find an answer,” they muttered impatiently, “then why keep on asking?” “But don’t you see?” he replied, and wandered off alone.
This parable, or one a bit like it, is told by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. It’s one way of saying that doubt is at the heart of the phenomenon we call religion, not certainty. Source: https://www.philosophy-foundation.org/blog/what-is-religion
FINDINGS
Citing Jürgen Habermas (2008), Gregory and Oliverio (2018) underscore the fruitful engagement of P4C with religious education, which is particularly valuable, they contend, in “a world in which religions are not seen any longer as a remainder of past ages to be overcome, but rather as legitimate speaking partners in the conversation of humankind. Valuable too, in this world, is the discovery of ‘tools’ like the community of philosophical inquiry, that can keep the avenues of communication open” (p. 291).
Indeed, in a space of just four weeks, I witnessed a transformation in my students’ apprehension of their role – and mine – in the classroom. Passive assimilation had given way to active thinking, reluctance to risk taking, certainty to doubt, ennui to wonder. And yet, while they had fully adapted to the process of doing philosophy and making meaning, the girls felt less confident when tasked with questioning a topic or each other. Nevertheless, I believe this introduction to inquiry-based learning was but a first step; with more time and practice, our inchoate CPI will mature intellectually and methodologically as my students learn to transfer and apply their new skills to other subject areas as well.
CONCLUSION
A minority is compelled to think; that is the blessing of its fate…. The conviction of the many is based on the weight of possession; the conviction of the few is expressed through the energy of constant searching and finding. ― Leo Baeck
I began this paper by drawing a distinction between asking and questioning because, to my mind, asking is satisfied with an answer while questioning requires that we search for one (or more) on our own. Insofar as questioning – and Socratic questioning, in particular – elicits deliberate, critical and constructive thinking, P4C, I would argue, is an essential medium for teaching children to embrace uncertainty as an opportunity and learning as a perennial process. My view was admittedly shaped by parents whose answer to most informational questions was “Look it up,” but the insight I have recently gained about “educating for uncertainty” (Tauritz 2016, Beghetto 2017, Deitcher 2020) has transformed my experiential instincts into a pedagogical approach that I hope to study and develop further in the classroom. Inculcating in children what Tauritz terms “uncertainty competences,” together with a “questioning attitude” and “reasonable doubt,” is no longer a strategy but a need.
In closing, I should note that, if not for the Covid-19 pandemic, I might not have ventured down this philosophical path – or, at the very least, not with the 8th grade. Seemingly overnight, students and teachers were yanked out of classrooms and thrust into a state of uncertainty, equipped only with standardized curricula that could neither anticipate nor adapt to an unfamiliar and rapidly changing landscape. And yet, what emerged in lieu of an archaic, uninspired system of education was one that forced us to leverage new and readily available technological resources – to rethink how we teach and how our students learn.
In short, Covid-19 has afforded us a singular opportunity to graduate from uniform collectivism to student-centered constructivism, and, if we are to embrace the pandemic and its repercussions as the “new normal,” it is incumbent upon the Ministry of Education, schools and educators to refine our methods and grow accordingly. Inquiry-based learning and P4C are an excellent start.
NOTES
[1] Lessons referenced herein were recorded on Zoom and audio. A link to all recordings is available upon request and at the writer’s discretion. I have designated myself TH in this and subsequent transcripts.
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Beghetto, Ronald. Inviting Uncertainty into the Classroom. Educational Leadership, vol. 75, #2, 2017, p. 20-25. URL: https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/inviting-uncertainty-into-the-classroom
Deitcher, H. (2020, July 24). The Urgency of Teaching for Uncertainty: It’s a Sign of the Times. URL: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-urgency-of-teaching-for-uncertainty-its-a-sign-of-the-times/
Glaser, J. (2012). Philosophical Inquiry with Tanakh. HaYidion: The Prizmah Journal, Teaching Tanakh (Summer, 2012), 12-15. URL: http://philosophy4tanach.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HaYidion-1202-Glaser.pdf
Godin, S. (2012). Stop Stealing Dreams: What Is School For? URL: https://seths.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/stop-stealing-dreams6print.pdf
Gregory, M. & Oliverio, S. (2018). Philosophy for/with Children, Religious Education and Education for Spirituality. Steps Toward a Review of the Literature (chapter), pp. 279-296 in Family Resemblances: Current Trends in Philosophy for Children (E. Duthie & F. G. Moriyón & R. R. Loro, eds.).
Kizel, A. (2017). Philosophic Communities of Inquiry: The Search for and Finding of Meaning as the Basis for Developing a Sense of Responsibility. Childhood and Philosophy, Vol. 13, No. 26, pp. 87-103. DOI: 10.12957/childphilo.2017.26650.
Kizel, A. (2020, January 4). Philosophy with Children Is Neglected in Israel’s Education. The Jerusalem Post. URL: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/philosophy-with-children-is-neglected-in-israels-education-613099
Lipman, M. (1988). Critical Thinking – What Can It Be?. Educational Leadership, 46 (September, 1988), 38-43.
URL: https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_198809_lipman.pdf
Lipman, M. (1999). What Is Happening with P4C? The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, 3:21-26. URL: https://philpapers.org/rec/LIPWIH
Tauritz, R. (2016) How to Handle Knowledge Uncertainty: Learning and Teaching in Times of Accelerating Change. Learning for Sustainability in Times of Accelerating Change, pp. 299-311. DOI: 10.3920/978-90-8686-757-8_19
WORKS CITED
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Timna Hurwich teaches English at the Evelina de Rothschild upper school in Jerusalem. She is also a partner and teacher in a private after-school enrichment program for gifted children.
Copyright © 2021 Timna M. Hurwich. All rights reserved