This book seeks to address the educational significance of philosophy as a subject in the K-12 curriculum, and includes a range of issues from the teaching of philosophy to the improvement of thinking, the nature of a community of inquiry, and the educational significance of grade school philosophy. The book is divided into 6 sections with 15…

Suggests that children learn about society's history and traditions by focusing on those societal relationships which are meaningful to them personally. The school should be thought of as a laboratory for understanding, appreciating, and engaging reflectively in real-life experince. (Author/AV)

An experiment in teaching logic to fifth graders using a children's story is reported. Part one of the report develops the experiment's rationale. A lack of reasoning ability among children is perceived and several causes are suggested -- among them a reliance on reading, math, and science as vehicles for reasoning, emphasis on problem solving…

Effective moral education requires children to engage in ethical inquiry. Ethical inquiry requires students to cultivate all aspects of their thinking, including critical, creative, and caring thinking (which includes active, affective, and valuative thinking). Only the discipline of Philosophy for Children, the narrative-and-discussion-based…

Discusses "Philosophy for Children," a K-12 curriculum employing a pedagogy called the "community of inquiry." Discusses thinking and democracy; cognition in the classroom; teaching distributed thinking (text-as-model); promoting discussion and a community of inquiry; learning to do philosophy; philosophy and judgment; and the…

Part of a series of philosophical readers, this story for elementary school children presents two characters, Kio and Gus, who are sensitive to ideas, language, and the world around them. The book consists largely of dialogue as each character narrates his/her story. In the course of a summer, Kio visits his grandfather's farm and befriends Gus,…

Examines whether elementary school children have the interest or ability to understand philosophy. Suggests that philosophical thinking among children should be encouraged and that it should take place in the terms and concepts of ordinary language with which children are comfortable. (Author/DB)

Argues that the best way to cultivate children's reasoning is to make philosophy an essential part of the elementary school curriculum. Philosophy alone provides the logical criteria for distinguishing better thinking from poorer. The author's "Philosophy for Children" program is described. (TE)

Soviet scholar Lev Vygotsky identified the most common cause of miseducation: failure to convert the classroom into a community of discursive inquiry. The USSR's Academy of Pedagogical Science is collaborating with Montclair State College (New Jersey) to introduce "Philosophy for Children," an American critical thinking program…

The teacher's role is not one of a supplier of values. Rather it is that of facilitator and clarifier of the valuing process. Philosophical reasoning, disclosure of differences, and moral significance of those differences can be used to further understanding of a moral dilemma. (JN)

Holds that ethical inquiry, as a "craft," causes students in this area to be "apprentices," and the classroom a "community of inquiry" wherein the tools, methods, practices, and procedures of the craft are imparted. States that the generic procedures of reasoning, necessary for moral reasoning, should be taught within…

Argues that inquiring must be the dominant feature of education. Notes that traditional education has treated children's thinking and inquiring as of little pedagogical worth; yet education that prepares for the exercise of judgment rests upon teaching students to cultivate the thinking process. Argues that schools must accept responsibility for…

Students in grades three and four are introduced to the concepts of abstract reasoning, ambiguity, and interpersonal relationships in this philosophic reader. The story involves mystery and myth and works with literary techniques of similie and metaphor. Pixie is introduced as a precocious character who is impatient with other people, a tease, and…

Designed to accompany "Pixie," a philosophy reader for students in grades three and four, this instructional manual presents discussion plans, games, philosophical activities, and reasoning exercises so that the concepts in the reader can be readily operationalized in the classroom. The "Pixie" program focuses on abstract reasoning, ambiguity, and…

This booklet introduces elementary school teachers to the methodology, climate, aims, and objectives necessary for the teaching of philosophical thinking to grade schoolers. The methodology casts the teacher as a facilitator whose primary task is stimulating children to reason about their own problems. The discussion process with hints and guides…