Philosophy is one of the disciplines most severely affected by the rise of productivist mentality: what does not produce added value in a clear and manifest way is disregarded and relegated to the trunk of confusing and useless elements.
This degradation of the value of philosophy It has been seen very clearly in the university environment, but in compulsory education the prospects are not particularly favorable.
Why invest time and money in promoting a line of knowledge and competence that will be truncated when the time comes for the labor market?
To these sociological arguments we must add psychological ones. It is a very widespread idea that a large part of schoolchildren do not have to benefit from philosophy, since developmental psychology shows the difficulty (or impossibility) of younger children when dealing with abstract ideas
See in this regard Jean Piaget’s theory of stages of development. Of course, studies on the development of brain connectivity (necessary to create abstractions, which are properties shared by the most varied objects) indicate that this is not fully consolidated until the third decade of life. Is, then, education in critical thinking for the little ones unnecessary?
Beyond the contents, praxis
Recent research suggests that teaching philosophy to children can produce a significant improvement in their intelligence level The study, carried out by Spanish researchers (Roberto Colom, Félix García Moriyón, Carmen Magro, Elena Morilla) and whose results have been published in Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, is a longitudinal investigation in which a group that was given weekly philosophy classes (455 boys and girls) and a group that was followed for 10 years, from the age of 6 until the end of secondary school, control to which these classes were not taught (321 boys and girls). Both the control group and the treatment group had the same socioeconomic profile and both belonged to students from private schools in the Madrid area.
The results show that the members of the treatment group increased their IQ by 7 points (general cognitive ability) and 4 and 7 points in fluid and crystallized intelligence, respectively. Furthermore, philosophy classes with children reduced the accumulation over the years of the number of students in the “risk zone” (with a relatively low IQ score), a typical problem for educational institutions.
Regarding the influence of these sessions on personality traits, philosophy students from an early age showed a tendency towards extraversion, honesty and emotionality These features could be enhanced, more than by the content of the classes themselves, by the teaching modality that philosophy requires to be taught in classes: discussion groups, debate to question preconceived ideas and the continuous proposal of questions. Philosophy with children requires a much more democratic class structure in which the student is an active subject along with the rest of his classmates and the teacher becomes a facilitator and guide of the students’ investigations (something that connects very well with Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development).
A new paradigm
If we recapitulate, we will see that the particularity of philosophy is not so much the content of these studies, understood as a “package of information” that is transmitted unilaterally from the teacher to the students, but the role of this discipline as a favorable framework for asking questions and proposing answers, that is, developing one’s own way of seeing the world. This dynamic of questioning things does not have to be limited only to some topics that cannot be covered by the child’s mind, just as sport is important for all people, regardless of their ability to gain muscle mass.
Philosophy can itself constitute a healthy habit and training for the transcendental questions that will come in later stages of development, as well as offer a space in which work on the management of intersubjectivity and understanding with others
