Interview with Ann Margaret Sharp—Part 1/Part 2

by Saeed Naji

Ann Margaret Sharp, the "grand-old-lady" of the Lipman-school, is one of the main characters in the IAPC organisation, and has collaborated with founder Matthew Lipman for many years. She has written philosophical short-stories for children, and has also contributed to several of the teacher manuals.

Saeed Naji is a researcher at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran, Iran, cfr. http://www.ihcs.ac.ir/. Naji interviewed Ann Margaret Sharp on a P4C-conference in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, on February 26th, 2004. Many thanks to Saeed for letting us publish this interview. Visit Naji's Iranian P4C-pages: www.p4c.ir

1. Why is the philosophical novel more effective in education than the philosophical text?

John Dewey was wont to remind educators that there is a big difference between the logical development and presentation of a discipline and the psychological, developmental presentation of a discipline.

The philosophical text is an attempt to present philosophy in a logical and comprehensive manner devoid of experience. The philosophical story-as-text is an attempt to motivate children to inquire into philosophical concepts and philosophical procedures in a way that is directly related to children's experience. In other words, the narrative presents philosophy embedded in the experience of fictional characters.

Children enjoy stories and can be motivated by them to think and inquire if the stories focus on issues and event which they find intriguing and contestable, while remaining connected to their own daily experience. When a story is discussed by a group of children it becomes a vehicle over which children, rather than adults, have control. Unlike the traditional textbook, it is their story and they use it to set an agenda for discussion and philosophical inquiry.

But there is a further reason for using narrative when working with children. We cannot assume that children walk into the classroom able to do philosophy well. They need to know how to proceed, and one effective way to help them acquire this procedural knowledge is to involve them, intellectually as well as emotionally, in the lives of characters who enact and model the processes of inquiry. These characters do not have to be the heroes, heroines and villains one finds in many literary children's classics, but can be presented as ordinary children much like themselves. These fictional children take up the struggle of articulating what constitutes a good reason, or a good analogy or a good distinction or of examining the assumptions and implications of what is said. By what they think, say and do, they show that they care about ideas and value good thinking–even if they do not always exemplify it in their own behavior. If we can encourage children to identify with the intellectual processes of these characters, then they too will begin to practice these procedures of good inquiry and come to value them.

This view of narrative as a preparation for and a stimulus to children doing philosophy matches, in part, Martha Nussbaum's account of the relationship between moral education, ethical judgment and narrative... Noting that philosophy must be directed to practical as well as theoretical concerns, Nussbaum, in her Loves Knowledge, makes a compelling case for approaching ethical judgment–making via the particular lives and complex predicaments of fictional characters:

Without a presentation of the mystery, conflict and riskiness of the lived deliberative situation, it will be hard for philosophy to convey the peculiar value and beauty of choosing humanly well... It is this idea that human deliberation is constantly an adventure of the personality, undertaken against terrific odds and among frightening mysteries, and that this is, in fact, the source of much of its beauty and richness, that texts written in traditional philosophical style have the most insuperable difficulty conveying. (p. 142)

All children are engaged in an adventure of making better judgments (whether they realize it or not). This involves thinking, critical, creative and caring thinking, about many aspects of human experience that are not tapped by traditional philosophy textbooks. Children who are in the process of building their own communities of philosophical inquiry will use stories as a springboard or trigger for their own further inquiry. What begins as reflection on a puzzling concept in a story will move to a consideration of questions and ideas which come from the children's own experience. The stories themselves constitute a vehicle for young persons to gain access to the realm of philosophical inquiry in such a way that they can see the connection between their on-going inquiry and their making of better judgments in their daily lives.

2. What characteristics, elements and components do the books concerning Philosophy for Children need to involve?

1. Each page should contain a variety of philosophical concepts that are common to most children of the age level, central to their experience and most importantly, controversial. These concepts should be so very obvious that it would be very difficult to not notice them.
2. Each chapter should present as puzzling some aspects of philosophical inquiry, e.g. trying to identify what is a good reason or a good inference or an important question.
3. Each novel should have the fictional children themselves modeling the procedures of philosophical inquiry: the richness and complexity of philosophical dialogue, the differing of points of view, the analysis of inferences, reasons, assumptions, analogies, the offerings of counter-examples and alternative positions and the process of self-correction that goes on among the children in the community.
4. Each novel should model characters engaged in a growing care, respect and sensitivity to the philosophical styles and world views of each other.
5. Each novel should model a sensitivity to the emotions of each other and how these emotions influence their points of view in the philosophical dialogue.
6. Each novel should model a cooperative and collaborative inquiry, a willingness to build on the ideas of each other, and eventually to identify with the work of the Group while at the same time constructing a sense of trust, care and solidarity.
7. Although a philosophical novel can focus on one aspect of philosophy (e.g. in my Nakeesha and Jesse for 5-6 year olds, I focus on philosophy of body) but should include as many dimensions of philosophy as possible (ethical, logical, aesthetic, epistemological, metaphysical, etc.).
8. Each novel should embed the philosophical concepts and procedures deeply within the daily experience of the fictional children in such a way that the student readers will feel that it really matters to figure out what these concepts mean and what these procedures can deliver in the way of meaning.
9. Drawing on the history of philosophy, each novel should present different views about philosophical concepts and procedures, so as to encourage children to enter the philosophical conversation and think for themselves about the meaning of these concepts and what role they play in how they view themselves and the world. These differing views can be voiced by different fictional characters in language that is representative of their age level.
10. Each novel should model the judgment-making process in all of its complexity (showing children engaging in critical, creative and caring thinking.)
11. Each novel should also model the children in the novel growing emotionally and socially, as well as cognitively.
12. Each novel should model an adult teacher as philosophical facilitator, as interested in the outcome of the inquiry as any individual child. Such a teacher should refrain from lecturing, be willing to model philosophical inquiry for the children in such a way that they can internalize the procedure and start to practice it for themselves and by themselves. Good philosophy teachers tend to be philosophically self-effacing, prone to ask open-ended questions. However, they are pedagogically strong in terms of helping children master the skills needed to do good philosophical inquiry. They know how to model these skills and are quick to point out alternative positions if others do not, just as they are ready to question an analogy or ask for assumptions, if the children in the group do not do it.

This is not to say that all fictional philosophy teachers should have the same kind of personality or philosophical style... Some can be much more directive, probing, serious, fun-loving, grouchy, confident, outgoing, young, relaxed, timid, conservative than others—but what they have in common is a certain wonder and curiosity to find out about things that they think really matter and not assume that they know the answers to these philosophically puzzling issues. Further, they should model a respect for the ideas and feelings of children as well as an ability to establish an environment of trust and openness in the classroom.

3. What are the differences between this kind of novel and other novels at the children's level?

Philosophy for Children novels are a new genre with a specific purpose: to invite children into participating in the ongoing philosophical conversation about central and common and controversial concepts that are embedded in human experience. In that sense they have a strong didactic purpose and often are constructed around a spine of traditional philosophical concepts and strategies designed to reflect, on the one hand, aspects of the tradition of philosophy, and on the other, the kinds of ideas and thinking styles which are welcomed by children who reflect on their own experiences.

These novels are accompanied by manuals that:

1. point out the leading ideas to the teachers and give them some idea of the different positions that have been held about them in the history of philosophy,
2. provide teachers with exercises and discussion plans that are an attempt to reconstruct the history of philosophy, on one hand, and involve children in philosophical inquiry that probes the relationship of the concepts to their own experience,
3. the manuals are also committed to giving teachers and students a myriad of exercises and discussion plans that help them to refine their own thinking and become conscious of the process of inquiry as it evolves.

Such raising of consciousness about one's own thinking eventuates in children's self-correction, one of the chief traits of critical thinking.

Traditional literature for children does not have this didactic purpose, nor are the stories accompanied by manuals that aim to involve children in the doing of philosophy at a highly conscious level. Even though some might believe that approaching philosophical issues through traditional literature is easier than working from these purpose-written novels and manuals, I suspect that it is more likely to be the other way around. In most countries, teachers are not prepared in the art and craft of philosophical inquiry. To explore the philosophical dimension of literature, and teaching children to do the same, requires an expertise that cannot be taken for granted, especially given the complexity of a good piece of literature.

Where analysis of plot and character development are crucial goals in a literature class, what one looks for in philosophy is a way into the thinking strategies and ideas that lie beneath the surface of the story. Standard literature does not set out to provide the reader with the tools needed for actually doing philosophy. It is not concerned with concept formation and analysis, open-ended questions and dialogue, generating speculative and creative hypotheses about the nature of things, identifying the structure of arguments and fallacies of reasoning, or weaving, in a reflective and self correcting manner, the procedures of inquiry into the story. These procedures often become the focus of attention in a philosophical discussion, and it cannot be taken for granted that teachers and students will simply pick them up in the course of analyzing a literary work. Even the recognition of a particular concept as controversial, and thus ripe for inquiry is something that has to be learned through practice.

The philosophy for children story-as-text functions as an appropriate springboard to inquiry because:

1. They expose ordinary emotions and feelings to scrutiny without putting real children and their problems under the spotlight. In this way the children can discuss the reasonableness of the character's emotions and together try to understand why they feel as they do.
2. In addition to their value as art, they portray philosophical practice as a craft which can be taught and learned.
3. They present philosophical concepts, procedures and situations in real-life contexts which are readily transferable for the children.

In summary I would not say that the procedure which lie at the heart of philosophical inquiry cannot be mastered by teachers and children using standard literature. But I think that this strategy, when compared with the application of a structured didactic philosophical story—as-text is more difficult and it is more likely that the philosophical dimension of the dialogue will give way to literary analysis or "explication de text".

4. What are the differences between the p4c novels and some philosophical stories as Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder?

Sophie's World is an ingenious story which aims to present the history of philosophy to children. Philosophy for children stories are an attempt to engage children in the doing of philosophy itself. They constitute a reconstruction of the history of philosophy in such a way that it is embedded in fictional children's experience. This reconstruction models the inquiry process, motivates the children to inquire and facilitates the children in the classroom relating the concepts and procedures of philosophy to their everyday life.

5. You have written some novels and short stories in other series. How is it possible to intersperse each page in these stories with lightly concealed philosophical meanings, problems and relationships?

I have written a number of philosophical short stories and have constructed three programs in philosophy for children, two (The Doll Hospital and Jesse and Nakeesha) aimed at 4-6 year olds, and the other, Hannah, with its manual, Breaking the Vicious Circle, aimed at early adolescents.

The Doll Hospital with its manual, Making Sense of My World, focuses on the procedures of communal inquiry while helping children become conscious of the central philosophical concepts such as person, real, good, beauty, truth and identity. Nakeesha and Jesse, a sequel to The Doll Hospital, with its manual, Flesh of My World, focuses on philosophy of body, while at the same time bringing children's attention to the ageless philosophical concepts that make up their world: love, friendship, compassion, mind, self, knowing, time and exploitive relationships.

This particular work, along with Hannah, a program for middle school children, are different in the sense that they also focus on a disturbing social problem: child abuse. They are part of a project of La Traversee in Quebec, Canada (there are seven programs in all) that aims to help children understand the problem of child abuse and become conscious of strategies to prevent their being subjected to such abuse. What is different about the approach is that instead of giving children a list of rules to follow, the issue of child abuse is introduced through an exposure to philosophy of body, together with the ageless philosophical concepts that underlie children's experience. Further, children are afforded an opportunity to practice self-consciously the various skills of critical, creative and caring thinking, while probing philosophical concepts such as unjust relationships.

Whether I am writing a philosophical short story or a philosophical novel, to the extent that the story deals with children's questions, children's puzzlement, children's daily experience, it is inevitable that philosophical concepts will arise. What child isn't interested in friendship and what child isn't puzzled by family relationships, time, space and what makes a person a person? On the other hand, short stories usually allow for less attention to philosophical strategies and procedures. It is at this point that the manuals accompanying these short stories must introduce a variety of exercises on good reasons, good distinction-making, good analogies, good inferences, assumption finding and logical fallacies. What one often gains with a short story is an opportunity to focus on one central question that is meaningful for young persons. For example, I remember writing a short story on "Why do People Have Babies"? This story (Jesse's question) afforded an opportunity not only to explore a question many children are interested in, but allowed me to introduce concepts such as nature, love, relationships while at the same time exploring in depth what constitutes a good reason.

6. What are the differences among books concerning children of different ages, during which children may have special demands?

If one studies the structure of the philosophy for children novels, one recognizes quickly that the philosophical concepts appear again and again, whether the child is four or eighteen. The reason for this is that most philosophical concepts are ageless: we need them when we begin to speak and to put together some understanding of our world. Even if I am three, I have to have some working conception of friend, parent, self, body, mind, good, time, and true ... For the most part, children pick up these working conceptions from the incipient folk psychology that permeates their family and neighborhood environment.

It is when children begin to do philosophy with their peers that they begin to realize that many of these concepts are controversial: many people see things very differently than they do. It is this problematic situation that gives rise to communal philosophical dialogical inquiry.

On the other hand, there is a sequence to the introduction of thinking skills, philosophical procedures and strategies. One does not present the whole of them for consideration in the first book for four year olds. Why? It would be overwhelming. But this is not to say that children of four are not engaged in performing many of these skills: it is just that they are not aware that they are doing it, nor can they recognize when they are doing it well or doing it badly. Thus in The Doll Hospital for children age 4 or 5, I focus on two skills, contradiction and hypothetical thinking as well as introducing the children to the concept of good reason, cause and effect and criteria... In Jesse and Nakeesha I focus on perceptual inference, while at the same time giving the children more practice in hypothetical thinking and contradiction. Elfie focuses on distinction-making and comparisons; Kio and Gus on thinking skills such as inclusion and exclusion and detecting assumptions. Pixie focuses on analogical reasoning, while Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery focuses on formal reasoning, conversion, syllogistic reasoning, relational logic, informal fallacies, contradiction and hypothetical thinking.

One last thing on this topic: many people mistakenly think that the stories for very young children should be less metaphysical, when just the opposite is true. Very young children do not make the distinctions that older people make. They see the world much more holistically and they puzzle over why it is the way it is and how the parts are related to the whole. Because they are in the process of acquiring language, they are not so quick to close off inquiry by engaging in linguistic games or citing what they think is factual evidence. For the young child, as for the philosopher of science, they are not sure what a fact is or how something becomes fact. In that sense they are more open to counterfactuals, possible worlds and alternative solutions to problematic issues.

7. What method in Philosophy for Children is used to teach reasoning and judgment? What is the difference between this method and the method for adults?

Adults who want to do philosophy with children learn good reasoning and good judgment-making in the same way that children do:

1. by being exposed to a story that is problematic and motivates the reader to inquire;
2. by constructing a community of inquiry with one's peers in which the individuals learn how to listen to each other, question well, ask for criteria, reasons and point out assumptions, build on each other's ideas, offer counter-examples, question the inferences of others, suggest alternative points of view, criticize the analogies of one another, begin to understand the world-views of one another, construct new meanings and new relationships, develop a sensitivity to the feelings and emotions of each other, develop a love for the tools of inquiry, especially self-correction and follow the inquiry where it leads;
3. by engaging in critical, creative and caring thinking: that is, becoming conscious of criteria, context and the need for self correction; thinking in terms of alternative possibilities and asking each other to work out the consequences of individual judgments in terms of the effect it would have on the self, other and nature in general;
4. by developing certain dispositions conducive to communal inquiry: attentive listening, imaginative sympathy for the world views of others, tolerance for different positions, curiosity, wonder, compassion for persons and other modes of nature, critical questioning, caring thinking, intellectual tentativeness, intellectual humility, sense of solidarity with one's communal inquirers, thinking in terms of possibilities, projecting ideal worlds and ideal selves, and developing a love of egalitarianism and reasonableness.

8. It is suggested that the Philosophy for Children novels be translated, but there are difficulties in doing this. There are ethical values in the novels that the children of some countries would not have sympathy with. Also, there may be a cultural spirit that is inconsistent with the ethical values in different countries. How can this difficulty be overcome?

The novels should not only be translated but adapted to the culture of the Children. This means that if there are some issues that would just never come up in a certain country (e.g. in Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery there is the problem of saluting the flag)—then it is the task of the translator and adaptor to find a similar issue that would provoke analogous open inquiry among the children. And it stands to reasons that particulars can be changed to suit the culture: baseball can become soccer; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches can become tacos, the names of children should reflect the society in which the program is being taught. But in a sense these are technicalities and a matter of skill on the part of the adaptor.

However, with regard to the inherent values of philosophy for children with its emphasis on communal inquiry and children's coming to think for themselves about philosophical concepts and procedures, I can say the following:

There is a big difference between procedural values and substantive values. It is certainly true that Philosophy for Children (and I might say most philosophy) makes a commitment to procedural values: questioning, egalitarianism, non-indoctrination, critical judgment-making, open-ended inquiry, self-correction and democratic procedures. These are the criteria that govern how the doing of philosophy proceeds in the classroom, the how of the dialogical thinking, the how of communal inquiry.

However, the what of the dialogical thinking and communal inquiry is always open. Philosophy for Children encourages children:

1. to be conscious of what others have said about an issue (and that includes philosophers of the past even if the child is not aware that the words spoken by fictional characters are the words of Spinoza or Aristotle or Marx);
2. to be conscious of what one's peers think about an issue;
3. to engage in reflective and communal inquiry with one's peers about the issue, and ultimately;
4. make a judgment. This judgment is a manifestation of the child's thinking for himself or herself about the issue under question.

For example, there are issues of dating and divorce and stealing, lying, child abuse and exploitation that come up in the context of the philosophical stories. These then becomes issues into which the children inquire taking into consideration contexts, consequences, projections of ideal personhood, ideal worlds, empathy, good reasons, comprehensiveness. But ultimately they have to make up their own minds whether in this particular circumstance lying or divorcing or stealing was the right or wrong thing to do.

In other words, Philosophy for Children does not tell the child what to think: ultimately that is up to the child. What it does do is give children the intellectual, social and emotional tools that they need to think well, to think judiciously and reasonably and, by means of the classroom community of inquiry, fosters the care, commitment and courage to act on their thinking.

9. You have written some teacher manuals containing hundreds of philosophical exercises and discussion plans. Can you tell me about the experience and discuss the necessary contents of such manuals and the way they are employed.

Yes, I have collaborated with Professor Lipman on a number of manuals, and have constructed three manuals myself in Philosophy for Children. First, I would like to say that I have learned a great deal from Professor Lipman, most importantly, how to construct exercises and discussion plans that truly foster philosophical thinking and self-correction on the part of children. The experience of creating manuals has been very rich and satisfying for the following reasons:

1. It motivated me to restudy the history of philosophy and consider what alternative philosophers have had to say on many philosophical issues.
2. It goaded me to consider the myriad of philosophical procedures and how they could be instantiated in such a way that children could practice them in a way that was relevant to their own experience.
3. It encouraged me to rethink the awesome, complex art of good teaching and all that it involves.
4. It motivated me to try to give teachers all the help I could in enabling them to conduct good philosophical dialogues in their classrooms.
5. It provoked me to listen carefully to the discourse of children in informal environments: how they use words and concepts and how they try to reason in such a way that they make sense to themselves and others.
6. It called out my creativity in the sense that I found myself having to construct a myriad of activities involving role playing, mime, song, dance, painting, and other modes of philosophical communication.
7. It forced me to explain the leading philosophical ideas to teachers in ways that were faithful to the history of philosophy, while at the same time in language that teachers could understand and relate to their own experience as well as the experience of children.
8. The more I became involved in the writing of manuals, the more I began to see that much of good philosophy is the ability to ask the right question at the right time in the right circumstances.
9. The construction of the discussion plans revealed the complex and intricate beauty of philosophical dialogue when it is done well. In other words there is a strong aesthetic dimension to philosophical communal dialogue that can be brought to consciousness and used as one means of student evaluation of their own dialogues.
10. It heighten my respect for the depth and the potential of children's thinking, children's inquiry and children's potential in making fine judgments when they learn how to inquire together.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that there can be no doing of philosophy on the part of children divorced from the transformation of traditional authoritarian classrooms into democratic classroom communities of inquiry.

Such a community is a group of children who inquire together about common problematic issues, offer each other reasons, give each other counterexamples, question each other's inferences and assumptions, encourage each other to come up with better reasons for their view, offer alternative solutions to the problem at hand, respect each other as persons and follow the inquiry where it leads. In time, the children come to identify with the work of the group, instead of always fixating on what they think. They slowly learn how to cooperatively build meanings and commit themselves to an ongoing self-conscious reconstruction of one's world view as the inquiry proceeds. This constructing and reconstructing of the meaning of philosophical concepts and thus one's own world view is the hard work of communal inquiry.

The classroom community of inquiry enables children to experience what it is like to live in a context of mutual respect, disciplined dialogue and cooperative inquiry free from arbitrariness and manipulation. Such a model permits the direct practice of certain dispositions: interrelation of all participants for the equilibrium of the whole, preservation of what is thought of as valuable, tolerance for different perspectives and fostering of care. The community of inquiry, at its best, offers children an immersion into a democratic, epistemological, ethical and aesthetic experience that can serve as funded experience of the group as they begin to envision new possibilities, new relationships, new values. The growing sensitivity to each other, the appreciative discerning of parts and wholes, the imaginative manipulation of elements to construct meaning will be dependent on the consciousness and quality of this immersion. As children become more conscious of the various dimensions of the community of inquiry, they find that it takes on more meaning: they come to truly care about its form, its procedures and its outcome.

What children care about reveals to others and to themselves what really matters to them. To care is the opposite of being indifferent. Care is the source of friendship, love, values, commitment, human tenderness and compassion. Such care ties oneself to conviction. Once this tie has been established, it follows that children are motivated to act on their beliefs. When children care, they feel they must do something about the problematic situation. They must make some judgment and then act.

The fostering of such care is important because without it valuational thinking, ethical thinking is impossible. With all our technology and wealth, there exists among many young persons today a fear that maybe nothing ultimately matters. The threat of this feeling is apathy, non-participation and the grasping for external stimulants. If children really don't care about anything outside of survival, the possibility of creating a more just and peaceful world is non-existent.

It is in this sense that the classroom community of inquiry offers children the opportunity not only to discover and practice cognitive skills, but to discover and create values, ideals and people they truly care about. It affords them an environment in which they can grow emotionally as well as cognitively, socially as well as politically. It is in such a context that they experience authentic dialogue, respect for each others as persons, a growing mutual trust and the ability to communicate on a myriad of levels. This growing trust in the seriousness and commitment of each other is invaluable in the education of the emotions.

Thus, if we are to foster caring inquiry (of which ethical inquiry is an important component), much more is needed that an expertise in the practice of logic and reasoning. What happens in participating in a classroom community of inquiry is that children become aware of a meaningful structure in the relationship of their lives to each other and the world. They discover many things about themselves and the world but they also create many possibilities as they proceed. As children come to commit themselves to communal inquiry and all that it involves (including a commitment to the principle of fallibilism) something much more important than a fostering of thinking skills is happening. Children find themselves living a democratic and inquiring form of life that has intrinsic meaning and calls forth their care, their love and their commitment. They discover themselves as cooperative inquirers, persons who are feeling, intuiting, sharing, wondering, speculating, creating, loving and willing, encountering the whole range of human experience with their classmates and teacher.

This is an experience of caring based on a trust that whatever happens in the external world, communication, friendship, love, solidarity, creativity, meaning construction, sharing of ideals such as beauty, justice, goodness and compassion are what really matter. It does no good to "tell" young people this: they have to experience it for themselves.