Once the concept of children's philosophy was put forward, it caused an uproar in education and philosophy circles, because it not only predicted the natural marriage relationship between children and philosophy, but also emphasized the bold idea of introducing philosophy education into the current non-higher education system, which was criticized and questioned by relevant people in academic circles.
If children's philosophy has caused such a heated discussion in a western region that has emphasized rational speculation since ancient times, then in an eastern region that pays more attention to emotional edification and moral enlightenment, the debate it has caused is bound to be more intense. In order to understand all aspects of these arguments and their respective theoretical basis, it is necessary for us to review the origin of children's philosophy and its development course in the past half century, and to describe in detail the discussions and arguments of Chinese and foreign scholars in various basic dimensions, as well as the history and present situation of its implementation in the world, so as to obtain the whole picture of children's philosophy.
The foundation of children's philosophy can be traced back to the 1960s, which is an important transition period in American history. Matthew Lippmann was teaching logic in the philosophy department of Columbia University. He made the following three systematic reflections on American education, which prompted him to develop children's philosophy. First of all, when he was teaching logic, he found that many college students were rigid in thinking, lacked comprehensive and dialectical thinking ability, became lifeless, lost the most basic curiosity and spirit of inquiry, and completely indulged in the "rhetoric" advocated by public opinion without being digested by themselves. Lippmann called them "Woodstock Generation". Lippmann believes that the root of this phenomenon is that students' logical reasoning ability has not been well trained. So is it too late to give these students remedial logic education? Lippmann firmly believes that it is difficult, because the fallacies and improper thinking habits accumulated in the long period before college have firmly bound their hearts. Therefore, the best way to save is to extend the training of reasoning ability to middle schools and even primary schools, so that children can receive the cultivation of high-quality thinking from an early age and eventually grow into an excellent thinker. This is the most direct motive force for Lippmann to design children's philosophy.
Secondly, Lippmann realized that the remedial measures taken for education at that time did not achieve the ideal effect, and at best, they could only "alleviate" the symptoms. Therefore, education must be redesigned according to the standard of maximum intrinsic value, significance, rationality and unity of teaching methods. He pays special attention to the phenomenon of "lack of meaning" in education, and thinks that children can't find those meanings related to themselves in school. Children enter the campus with curiosity, rich imagination and creativity, but when they come out, these elements are gone. However, there is no doubt that children not only naturally want and have the right to get meaning from all educational processes, so schools must redefine it according to meaning. Only when the children's life experiences inside and outside the school are meaningful can the new education plan be reasonable.
In order to design his ideal education plan, he made the following five suggestions: 1. The meaning of life can only be discovered by each child independently, not distributed to all children through packaging. To this end, he emphasized the necessity of inquiry, which is best placed in the process of exploring adventure, because it can provide a lot of opportunities for surprises, is an ideal life scene in children's fantasy, and can best stimulate children to actively explore meaning. This is 2. Education should aim at teaching children to think, especially to think independently, because thinking is the most powerful tool and can help children get the meaning of things. But thinking has both advantages and disadvantages, and it can be improved day by day through certain training. The purpose of this kind of training is to make children more thoughtful, innovative and considerate, and the most important thing is to significantly enhance their judgment. Lippmann believes that logic can best achieve this goal, so the new education plan must accommodate a large number of logical elements to systematically improve children's reasoning ability. Reading and thinking go hand in hand and complement each other. With the help of reading, children can get the meaning of life more effectively, but if they want to have a lasting interest in reading, they must ensure that the content of reading is closely related to their lives, that is, around the issues that children care about; At the same time, the text itself has shallow meaning and deep meaning. If we want to reveal the latter, we must develop children's reasoning ability. Inference naturally has the function of inferring implied meaning from literal meaning, which can further stimulate children's reading interest. 4. Thinking activities can be divided into static and dynamic. The former is only an individual's self-dialogue and an inner activity, while the latter is a dialogue with others, which can cause extensive, lasting and profound thinking. Lippmann borrows Vygotsky's and G.H. Meade's views, emphasizes the positive role of classroom discussion, and thinks that with the help of peers and adults, children can gain the meaning of life more effectively. 5. Actively introduce common philosophical concepts, such as truth, goodness, beauty, universe, freedom and friendship. On the one hand, because these concepts cover all aspects of human life, understanding these concepts will help children understand themselves and their society more comprehensively; On the other hand, the education system at that time had a tendency of excessive differentiation or specialization, which divided the complete picture of human knowledge into pieces, and it was difficult to meet the normal needs and interests of children for the integrity of the knowledge they had learned. Philosophy course is a comprehensive subject, which contains a large number of branches. The study of ethics, knowledge essence and existence essence is beyond the reach of all disciplines, but at the same time it is closely related to the problems discussed by each discipline itself, so it can better play the role of comprehensive courses.
Thirdly, I think about the feasibility of implementing philosophy education in childhood. Lippmann called the theory against children's learning philosophy the old educational theory. This theory holds that students can't learn philosophy until at least after high school. It is unthinkable to encourage children in primary schools or even preschool education to try philosophical thinking. Philosophy itself has its complexity, which will only make children feel bored and discouraged. Moreover, serious thinking itself will stifle children's thinking in images and imagination with aesthetic characteristics. However, the new educational theory is different. It holds that it is entirely possible to stimulate the thinking of the educated in the process of education, and it is entirely possible to educate children in philosophy. First, proper philosophical education will certainly produce proper philosophical thinking ability, which has nothing to do with children's age; Second, philosophy education not only includes the mastery and flexible application of philosophical concepts, but more importantly, the understanding and understanding of a series of concepts such as ideas and logical debates. It is not a simple knowledge transfer, but mainly thinking training; Third, children should learn philosophy in many ways. If philosophical thinking is integrated into popular story texts, children will not feel bored, but will find it interesting. Fourth, the new philosophy education should try to avoid the traditional daunting philosophical terms, and try to make use of everyday words or concepts familiar to children for philosophical thinking.