All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, Ch. 26
INTRODUCTION
Storytelling is as ancient as humankind. Storytelling and historia (from the Ancient Greek, meaning inquiry) are intrinsic to the production of social knowledge and memory and to the transmission of identity and culture. People are living histories whose experience, like life itself, according to John Dewey, is rooted in the principle of continuity through renewal: “With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices.” [1] So, even when the facts of history are wont to spin eternal truths from fabricated tales, narratives are the means whereby cultures appropriate and transmit those immemorial legends and traditions. Storytelling, I would therefore contend, is not merely useful; it is an essential pedagogical device for SELF discovery and cultural literacy.
At first blush, the “old quarrel” between philosophy and literature – between an inveterate quest for truth and the fabulation of enchanting falsehoods – may denote agonistic agendas of reason and the imagination in governing our perception of SELF and community. Fortunately, both philosophy and literature have come a long way since Plato proffered his defense for banishing poets and poetry from the ideal state. [2] Modern mainstream philosophy has carved out a place for subdisciplines in the arts, and philosophical fiction, [3] if not yet an acknowledged genre, per se, is nevertheless an identifiable class of literary narratives that engage in profound questions and conceptual problems of existential significance.
“SELF is a surprisingly quirky idea,” Jerome Bruner (2004) observes; it is “intuitively obvious to common sense yet notoriously evasive to definition by the fastidious philosopher.” How, then, might questions and a concept of SELF be made accessible to adolescent students? How might teachers utilize coming-of-age stories to integrate identity education and cultural literacy into middle school learning? And lastly, how might philosophical fiction facilitate the development of individual, personal narratives within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (hereafter CPI), as conceived by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp.
Identity is multifaceted and relational; the SELF, reflexively involved in its own definition, can make sense of the world only through an ongoing engagement with others. This inclination towards intersubjectivity, I shall argue, enables us to construct knowledge and meaning from both proximal and distal influences – that is, from stories and human history. As such, SELF discovery and cultural literacy require a collegial, educative space for reflection and dialogic encounters as well as suitable stories to furnish that space with immersive, relatable narrative content. They require a community of inquiry.
BACKGROUND
The participants in this CPI are fourteen 9th-graders at the Evelina de Rothschild Secondary School for girls in Jerusalem. All were assessed and assigned to my advanced placement (AP) EFL ability group – most in the 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. Seven students are native English speakers, three 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 self-directed tasks (e.g., PBL, games), guided learning activities (e.g., Think-Pair-Share, roleplay [4]) and reflection (individual and communal).
PROCESS
Since the spring of 2021, the dialogic underpinnings of Philosophy for Children (hereafter, P4C) have instantiated the concept of “interthinking” (Littleton & Mercer 2013) in my own classroom as a means for cultivating confidence and competencies for divergent and convergent problem solving. Drawing upon a preliminary four-week unit of study which introduced the class to the practice of doing philosophy in the 8th grade, techniques rooted in P4C and inquiry-based pedagogy were reconstituted for a year-long curriculum centered on identity education and cultural literacy. Students, previously discomfited – in some cases, daunted – by the Socratic method, now embraced uncertainty as opportunity; the declarative, “I don’t know” had been steadily displaced by “I think….” Passive assimilation of information had given way to active engagement – to a quest for knowledge and meaning – as students began to recognize the value of their own experience, point of view, interpretation and judgment. And yet, practically speaking, I wondered how the reasoning skills they had begun to hone through deliberation about abstract concepts such as Truth, Knowledge, Faith and Doubt might be transferred to phenomenological and reflexive paradigms of learning whereby layers of identity, both personal and cultural, might be excavated from the deceptively simple question, “Who are you?”
Insofar as the SELF develops by means of social experiences, it follows that the dialogic encounter which occurs in any group activity – be it Think-Pair-Share (TPS), whole-class discussions, debate or roleplay – should be creatively integrated across different subject areas to promote understanding, empathy, sharing, and acceptance of SELF and Other. Damian Spiteri (2010) thus underscores the value of the CPI in enhancing intercultural sensitivity, while Dorit Barak (2021) finds in P4C the potential to effect beneficial changes in the attitudes of young Israelis at risk of being negatively affected by class trips to Poland. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that P4C has been increasingly embraced in the United States and Europe as an interdisciplinary teaching model by practitioners of Identity Education, civics and cultural studies and could be equally beneficial to enhancing the quality of instruction and learning in Israeli schools.
To this end, I sought to augment the discernible, albeit inchoate, skills and confidence that my students had begun to exhibit, individually and collectively, by bridging the critical and creative – philosophy and fiction – with our reading of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The novella, a compact and complex trove of philosophical ideas and insights, would serve as the curricular fulcrum for the first semester, a reference point for the group’s communal reflection journal and subsequent in-class discussions. By transferring familiar inquiry-based techniques to new contexts, the process described herein acquainted the girls with the theoretical knowledge and terminology necessary to, first, assimilate such concepts as “intersubjectivity” and Edward T. Hall’s cultural iceberg theory, and then to apply these concepts by defining – and ultimately mapping – their own personal (character), social (moral, behavioral, cultural, religious) and intellectual (thinking) SELF.
As the students began to appreciate that identity is relational, the CPI and its concomitant reflection journal furnished “intentional speech communities” wherein members could think, plan, create, question and engage individually and collectively – where the particularity of the SELF might emerge from a plurality of ideas, perspectives and experiences. Bearing in mind the twofold purpose of the AP ability group presented here – namely, to learn English while developing collaborative and critical thinking skills – the tools and methods chosen for this year’s curriculum were all conducive to fostering the conversational classroom. And, to be sure, The Little Prince, a veritable wellspring of philosophical positions, problems and prompts engendered by encounters and conversations, is tailormade for the intrapersonal and interpersonal construct of P4C and inquiry-based learning.
THE COMMUNAL REFLECTION JOURNAL
Textbooks impart information and answers; stories elicit questions and wonder (Kennedy & Kennedy, 273). It therefore stands to reason that philosophical fiction, in general, and The Little Prince, in particular, should privilege the role of the reader in constructing meaning from the text and meaningful encounters beyond it. After all, dialogue and deliberation occur in communities; hence, our communal reflection journal invited the students to share initial thoughts, impressions, insights, questions and responses to the assigned reading before the chapters were discussed in class. In this plurality of intersubjectivities, attention to language, culture and reflexivity supplanted elaborate rehearsals of plot development as the girls learned to engage with and depart from the text.
“Departing the text” here serves a binary role as it refers to the action the reader must take in constructing meaning, on the one hand, and in exercising good judgment, on the other. Ann Margaret Sharp (2007) adapts Hannah Arendt’s term “going visiting” to the community of inquiry where children “share each other’s perspectives and try to build some bridges between their different ways of understanding a situation” (p. 302). When we “go visiting,” Sharp explains, “the imaginative work of visiting and storytelling is a combination of critical, creative and caring thinking,” which allows for divergent viewpoints in the decision-making process (p. 304).
The communal reflection journal thus provided a collegial, educative public space, where my students, together with the little prince, were tasked with making sense and meaning from his interpersonal encounters and his interstellar journey into being. Most striking, perhaps, were the myriad observations that had been rooted in their own experiences, and particularly those shaped by their perceptions of adults and adulthood.
Naomi: When do you enter the world of adults? Does the switch of worlds happen slowly or suddenly? Do you feel when you have switched over to the adult world?
Liat: I’m confused. Why in chapter 11 is there another character who is ordering the little prince around…? It’s as if they are ordering a child around but seems to be only for their benefit. Maybe that is really how children feel about adults.
Nina: The businessman reminds me of adults who enter the world of their work and fail to get out of it, failing to give attention to those around them. Sometimes my parents are like that, they do not pay attention to the children because they are working. Not that I blame people for behaving like that. You have to learn to get out of a situation that is difficult to get out of, which reminds me of depression.
Dvora: Can it be that the people on the planets represent different ways that grown-ups would want to live their lives or ways that they are scared they will end up?
(And a thought that doesn’t really have to do with this chapter: If the little prince lives alone, how does he know what he knows?)
Dana: What if the little prince is watching all the people on the planets because he needs to choose what kind of grown-up he is going to be (and that might be the reason there are no girls on the planets).
Is the narrator making up the people because he still didn’t choose what grown-up he wants to be?
Naomi: “The grown-ups are very strange.” I agree.
WHAT MAKES YOU, YOU?
Stories do more than help us make sense of the world; they help us make sense of who we are. So, while The Little Prince served as a concrete starting point for their reflections on identity and culture, our aim, as noted above, was to develop personal narratives from the deceptively simple question: “Who are you?” Having defined and assimilated the relevant terminology – from “intersubjectivity” to Hall’s cultural iceberg – the girls were able to juxtapose the meanings constructed from the text with their own lived experiences.
In the space of six weeks, the CPI would be tasked with revisiting and refining their evolving definitions of SELF as a multifaceted and relational phenomenon. The confidence and competencies they had cultivated through their ongoing engagement in the deliberative and dialogic process of problem solving was, at last, instantiated by the personal identity maps they created as the semester drew to a close. Thus equipped with a clearer sense of the layers that comprise their respective reflexive selves, the students were prepared to tackle one final question: “In your view, do you have more in common with religious teens abroad or secular and Arab teens in Israel?” Paired with a 2-part video depicting four American students’ perspectives on Israel, [5] the question was posed and discussed three times: before Part One, before Part Two, and after a second screening of both parts. What follows are excerpts from the transcript [6] of the girls’ responses, many of which, surprisingly, changed with each viewing.
After Part One
TH: Are they a “we” or a “they”?
Ayala: I think a “we” but… not because I choose it. They are “we” because they are Jewish and their family is Jewish, but I think that the attitude and the fact that this Michelle is so against us when she’s a part of it, and she knows that she can go to Israel and we’ll protect her no matter what. But, like, to go and say those [things] and then, if you need it, she’ll come.
TH: Do you think you’re more of a “we” with them than you are with Israeli teens here who aren’t religious? …Remember we talked about the iceberg?
Ayala: Yes.
Miri: I have a lot more in common with Israelis.
TH: If you think of the iceberg…. Remember all those things above the water – the flags, the food and the dress – right? But then we go beneath the surface….
Neta: I just think that, even the religious people in Israel… I feel really not in common with them in a lot of stuff. Really different. My personality and things that are important.
TH: If I put you in a room with one of these kids…
Ayala: No, you shouldn’t.
TH: …and a Gymnasia student and an Arab student….
Ayala feels she has the least in common with her Israeli secular peers who, as she put it, “When they do something wrong, they say that they don’t really care because there’s no one they feel they owe something to. Like, they’re doing whatever they want and have no consequences.”
Neta: All our lives are similar. We are growing up in the same country with the same rules and stuff, but I still feel more similar…
TH: To whom? The kids here or the kids there?
Neta: The kids there.
TH: Similar how?
Neta: With their religion.
TH: Do you think it all comes down to religion?
Ayala: Nope. That’s also part of your personality. Not personality but it’s a part of you….
TH: Do you have more in common with a secular teen in the States or a secular teen here?
Ayala: Here.
Neta: Of course. We’re growing the same way.
After Part Two
TH: The problem with the iceberg is, if we don’t go beneath the surface, we can’t understand a culture. By understanding what makes us different, we can also understand what makes us the same. So, if we go back to the question about the Jewish kids abroad, how does our perspective change? Do you think the kids in the video understand who we are?
Would it surprise you that fewer than 6% of American Jews think they have something in common with Israeli Jews? Remember Greenland? Does that surprise you?
Several: No.
Shira: I wouldn’t say I have something in common with them…. Maybe I’m Jewish, but it’s a whole different kind of Jewish. We have a different understanding of what it means to be Jewish when we’re Jewish and Israeli.
Ada: Yeah. Totally.
TH: So back to our question… Do you have more in common with them or…?
Nira: I agree with Shira. I said from the beginning that we have more in common with Israelis. They’re Jewish, but they’re totally different from us. Their environment (culture) makes them different.
Shira: For American Jews, it’s more about religion. For Israelis, it’s more about tradition….
TH: Do you think it makes sense that there’s an area of education called “Identity Education?”
Several: Yeah.
Ayala: There’s a lot to talk about.
FINAL REFLECTIONS
Whereas the reflection journal allowed for an open-ended, unmediated exchange throughout, I prefaced their tenth and final entries with the a number of guiding questions:
This is it. We’ve come to the end of OUR journey, and it’s time to reflect not only on what the prince and the narrator have learned and gained from theirs but also on what YOU have.
We started by asking “WHO ARE YOU?” and have examined that question through different lenses, including intersubjectivity, Hall’s cultural ICEBERG theory, nationality and faith. Do you feel that the book has helped you to become more self-aware? To define who you are? To put words to a general feeling you may have had but didn’t know how to describe? If so, explain how. If not, explain why.
And, finally, what about the book and this experience of reading it as a philosophical text do you think will stay with you long after you put it away?
Dvora: Wow, I was shocked. At first I thought : How can you end the book with the little prince killing himself, but then I realized that it’s not that. The little prince didn’t kill himself, he just left an empty shell of him as a child, and his journey led him to his grown-up self.
Liat: Wow! What an ending! … I don’t really know if the book helped me define myself better, maybe subconsciously, but I can’t put it into words. Yet I am sure it has affected me. I think what will stay with me from the book is the ending. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to the ending of this book. It’s like losing a loved one. You know you have no control over it, yet it hurts you so badly…. I’m not sure if I know how to express what I’ve learnt to others, but I feel it has encouraged me to think more deeply about things.
Nira: I’m shocked, I didn’t imagine that would be the end. I feel like my questions don’t have an answer, but it was an exciting ending. It was kind of a goodbye to the little prince, goodbye to the characters that he had a deep relationship with. It wasn’t dramatic, and it wasn’t sad. It was a combination of the two of them. The book made me more self-aware… [but] I think that it didn’t make me understand the question of “Who are you?” …It taught me how to read books that make me ask questions.
Neta: The ending was sad. I feel like these chapters are a separate part of the story. I think the book helped me to define who I am and as you said “To put words to a general feeling you may have had but didn’t know how to describe.” Maybe it was more the thinking after or the book analysis, but I think I won’t stop thinking about it and it will stay with me.
Ada: “People where you live… grow five thousand roses in one garden, yet they don’t find what they’re looking for.” These days, children, grownups, and even elders, take things for granted. They don’t see what’s under the ice, they only see what’s on top. But after reading this book, I learnt to never take anything for granted…. Another thing this book has taught me is to read books with an open mind and never close it until the end of the book. That way, I could learn to love the book in a different way…. The ending was such a perfect ending. It was not only an ending for the readers but also a closure for the little prince and the narrator’s friendship, and an ending of us saying goodbye to the book, and of the narrator saying goodbye to the little prince.
The group discussion that followed these reflections was bittersweet. Before turning to our broader theme of identity education and cultural literacy, the girls collectively returned to the question of whether the narrator and the little prince were one person, and Ada wondered if the transition from childhood to adulthood could be construed as a death of sorts – a poignant question which begged several others.
TH: Should Identity Education and cultural literacy be part of what we teach kids?
Ayala: Yes. Because we see ourselves in a very different light when you think about it. Like, we’re not just us – there’s a lot of little stuff that makes US – like the iceberg.
TH: Do you see yourselves differently after having done this – and the identity map and…? …Why is it so hard for young people to define identity – what it is, what it means?
Ayala: Because they have no experience, they don’t know….
Ada: They didn’t learn this.
Neta: Because they’re in the process of changing.
TH: Say that again. (applause) …You know who you are at 11, at 14…. If you’re everything you’ve lived, up to this point, your identity is always going to be….
Ada: changing.
TH: What was this journey for [the narrator]? The little prince was doing the traveling, and he’s stuck in the Sahara desert. And yet… he wasn’t just stuck in the desert. He was stuck between “is he a grown-up, is he a child?”
Any last thoughts before we say goodbye to the little prince and the narrator? What’s going to linger in your head? What’s going to stay with you?
Ada: How I read books will change.
Nira: I’m learning how to ask questions.
TH: Do you feel braver? More able to read philosophically?
Several: Yes.
FINDINGS
In their initial introduction to doing philosophy, my students adapted quickly to the process of inquiry-based pedagogy but felt less confident when tasked with questioning a topic or each other. In the ensuing months, the CPI we established last spring matured intellectually and methodologically as the girls – much like the children on the express trains with their noses pressed against the windows – recognized the infinite possibilities inherent in the drawing of a box rather than a sheep.
The classroom in which we meet is equipped with rolling student chairs that facilitate our frequent transitions from small group to whole-class discussions. I teach all my classes in this room and recently noticed that the 9th graders are the only ones who, without any prompting from me, arrange themselves in a semicircle when they take their seats. I believe this instinctual act is indicative of the group dynamic and their inclination towards intersubjectivity. It is apparent, moreover, in the flow of their dialogic engagement and in the cultivation of a collegial, educative space from which a plurality of personal and cultural selves has emerged.
I would argue that the immersive, relatable narrative content – namely, The Little Prince – facilitated this process and that storytelling is an effective pedagogical tool for cultivating identity and cultural literacy in the community of philosophical inquiry. In recent weeks, we embarked on a new literary journey of being and becoming with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The ease and confidence with which the girls have discussed and deliberated upon the first chapters promises to make this an equally edifying process of excavating SELF and sense from nonsense.
CONCLUSION
Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart.
Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.
The Little Prince, Ch. 21
Instruments of culture, Jerome Bruner (1990) maintains, are integral to individual human growth, and storytelling, unlike logic, thrives on conflict and uncertainty. Hence, philosophical fiction, which engages the reader in profound questions and conceptual problems of existential significance, is an essential pedagogical device for SELF discovery and cultural literacy. By stimulating the reader’s imagination and involvement in the construction of meaning and meaningful contexts for learning, stories shared within the community of inquiry combine critical, creative and caring thinking. Thus, in The Little Prince, the transformative power of friendship, love and loss is learned through interpersonal encounters, and the SELF that ultimately emerges by means of social experiences places this novella squarely within a literary tradition rooted in philosophy, culture and the shaping of individual identity.
REFERENCES
Bruner, J. (1990). Culture and Human Development: A New Look. Human Development, 33(6), 344–355. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26767333
Hetzler, F. M. (1988) The Person and The Little Prince of St. Exupéry. Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children, 7(3), 2-7. https://doi.org/10.5840/thinking19887316
Kennedy, N. & Kennedy, D. (2011). Community of Philosophical Inquiry as a Discursive Structure, and its Role in School Curriculum Design. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45(2), 265-283. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2011.00793.x
Makaiau, A. S. (2017). A Citizen’s Education: The Philosophy for Children Hawai’i Approach to Deliberative Pedagogy. In M. Gregory, J. Haynes, & K. Murris (Eds.), International handbook of Philosophy for Children, 19-26. New York, NY: Routledge.
Available at: https://p4chawaii.org/wp-content/uploads/Untitled.pdf
Sharp, A. M. (1987). What is a “Community of Inquiry”? Journal of Moral Education 16(1), 37-45, https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724870160104
Sharp, A. M. (2007) Let’s Go Visiting: Learning Judgment-Making in a Classroom Community of Inquiry. Gifted Education International, 23(3), 301-312. https://doi.org/10.1177/026142940702300311
Zaphir, L. (2018). Democratic Communities of Inquiry: Creating Opportunities to Develop Citizenship. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(4), 359-368.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2017.1364156
SECONDARY SOURCES
Barak, D. (2021). Challenges Regarding the Educational Journeys of Israeli Teenagers to Poland. Can P4C Help Teachers Tackle Them? Interdisciplinary Research in Counseling, Ethics and Philosophy, 1(3), 61-74. URL:
http://ircep.eu/index.php/home/article/view/29
Bruner, J. (2004). The Narrative Creation of Self. In L. E. Angus & J. McLeod (Eds.), The Handbook of Narrative and Psychotherapy: Practice, Theory, and Research (pp. 3–14). Sage Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412973496.d3
Collingwood, R.G. (1938). Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 247-9.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: MacMillan.
Levinson, N. (2001). The Paradox of Natality: Touching in the Midst of Belatedness,” in Gordon Mordechai (ed.) Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, p. 21.
Littleton, K. and Mercer, N. (2013). Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Oliverio, S. (2015). Lipman’s Novels or Turning Philosophy Inside-Out. Childhood and Philosophy. 11. 81-92.
Spiteri, D. (2010). The Community of Philosophical Inquiry and the Enhancement of Intercultural Sensitivity. Childhood & Philosophy, ISSN 1984-5987, 11, 2010, 86-111. URL: https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5120/512051599007.pdf
[1] Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: MacMillan, 2.
[2] See Plato, The Republic, Book X, 607b. “Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and our apology, and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her from our city, since such was her character. For reason constrained us. And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel between philosophy and poetry.”
[3] The term “philosophical fiction” is used herein to distinguish classic and popular works of literature which may – deliberately or incidentally – appeal to both reason and the imagination by eliciting open-ended questions, critical and creative thought, and a pursuit of deep truths. The “philosophical novel,” as conceived by Matthew Lipman, is, conversely, a schematic narrative designed to model the practice of philosophizing, or of doing philosophy, for primary school students and teachers: “Each of the novels in the Philosophy for Children curriculum begins with a problem and works its way through to some kind of solution by the end of the book. The curriculum is therefore, in a sense, a narrative of the children’s acquisition of the moral qualities they are expected to model to one another.” Lipman, A Life Teaching Thinking, 117, cited in Oliverio (2015), 91.
[4] Roleplay in this context refers to reenacting complex and/or unresolved historical events or incidents, such as the 1913 coroner’s inquest into the death of British suffragette Emily Davison. It is an entertaining and instructional activity whereby students are better able to investigate and assess the issue in question experientially and draw conclusions both individually and collectively.
[5] I am indebted to Dr. Howard Deitcher for sharing the product of his research and permitting me to use it in my class.
[6] 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.
Timna Hurwich teaches English at the Evelina de Rothschild Secondary School in Jerusalem, Israel. She also runs a private after-school enrichment program for high-achieving students in grades 7-10.
Copyright © 2022 Timna M. Hurwich. All rights reserved