The Cultivationof ReasoningThrough Philosophy

tATHEw LIPMAN

The best way todevelop children's

reasoning is to makephilosophy a central part of

the elementary schoolcurriculum.

A the suspicion becomes wide-spread that the disappointing ac-deinic performance of a great

manv students is connected with ashortfall in cognitive skills. advocatesof some disciplines have begun to takean interest in the situation Amongthese disciplines is philosophx For anumber of reasons it is precisely tophilosophy that the major responsibil-int for the improvement of reasoning ishould be entrusted

For philosoph,. the challenge ishardlx' novel Since its inception, phi-losophy has been the only disciplineto prnoide the criteria---the principlesof logic--hat make it possible to dis-tinguish better reasoning from worsePhilosophy has long been concernedwxith the improvement of reasoningproficiencies, clarification of concepts.anal'sis of meanings. and fostering ofattitudes that dispose us to wonder.inquire, and seek meaning and truthIndeed. one of the traditional defini-tions of philosophy has been that it isdtinling tUt dertoes itself to trh im-prntement of tinking In brief, theanswer to the question of how best tocultivate children's reasoning is tomake philosophX an essential part ofthe elementarn school curriculum

MIatrheix Lipman is I)nret w lnq t''t firthe .4,aneemefl ( PHjolnkqW fri' Cnl-d cn-. hMowclair Stue cWollegRe t er .tfof-cat. .Netw les

SFrTEMBER 1984

4;4C;heX cultivation

of reasoningcannot be carriedout unless weuse criteria todistinguish betterthinking fromworse, and onlyphilosophyprovides suchcriteria."

Teaching Philosophy inElementary SchoolsPhilosophy does not have to be presented in the elementary school as ithas been taught in the college oruniversity. When it sheds its technicalterminology and its history of systemsof thought but retains its emphasisupon the logical discussion of ideas,philosophy is still philosophy. When itconsists of cooperative, self-correctiveintellectual inquiry, even though thestudents are in primary classrooms, itremains philosophy When added tothe curriculum, philosophy can makeschooling genuinely reflective by moti-vating children to talk to each other ina disciplined manner about substan-tive matters and to think objectivelyabout their own thinking

Philosophy can he taught in manyways to school children from kinder-garten through high school. At theInstitute for the Advancement of Phi-losophy for Children, we have foundthat philosophical texts for studentsare essential. These texts are written inthe form of novels rather than in theabstract, didactic form of traditionaltextbooks. The children who are char-acters in the novels are not taught theprinciples of logic but discover themin the process of discussing philo-sophical concepts of importance tothem such as fairness, friendship, andtruth.

The children in the classroom dis-cuss these discoveries in a cooperativefashion. If some children offer gener-alizations, others may offer counter-instances; if some voice opinions with-out reasons, others promptly requestadequate reasons Gradually the-ycome to discover inconsistencies intheir own thinking. As time goes on,they learn to cooperate by building onone another's ideas, by questioningeach other's underlying assumptions,by suggesting alternatives when somefind themselves blocked and frustrat-ed, and by listening carefully and respectfully to the ways in which otherpeople express how things appear tothem.

Through such disciplined dialoguea community of inquiry begins to develop in the classroom. As the participants in such a community fully appre-ciate the process, they internalize itand use it to approach eern, academicdiscipline in schtool Moreover, whenthe self-corrective behavior of thegroup is internalized, it becomes aself-critical, self-correcting dispositionin the individual, which may showitself behaviorally in increased capacitv for self-control.

52 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

M

As a subject, philosophv is highlyteacher-sensitive; not everyone can hesure of teaching it successfully. Toteach philosophy requires several abil-ities-the ability to listen scrupulouslyto what children actuallv sax and aretnrying to say, the ability to recognizethe logical patterns of children's dis-course and the philosophical dimen-sion of their concerns, th- ability toorchestrate discussions, and the abilitrto encourage children to think forthemselves.

Teachers in our program attendtwo-and-a-half hour workshops once aweek for a vear while they teach phi-losophy in their classrooms for three45-minute periods a week During theyear the teacher educator (always aphilosopher) visits the classroom ofeach teacher six times or more Begin-ning with a model session. the philos-opher demonstrates the use of thematerials to motivate a philosophicaldiscussion among all the childrenwhile the teacher observes, then thephilosopher observes while the teach-er conducts lessons

Teacher educators in philosophymust be skilled professionals who, inaddition to having taught children,hold a doctorate in the discipline andhave received special training to pre-pare them to work with children.teachers, and the curriculum Withoutsuch a background, teacher educatorsaIre unable to convey to teachers anappreciation for the wealth of philo-sophical concepts that children areeager to discuss. nor can the! effec-tivel 5-equip teachers with the abilitiesfor sharpening children's reasoning

Misconceptions AboutReasoningAt this point two prevalent misconcep-tions about reasoning must be men-tioned. The first concerns the relation-ship between primarv reasoning skillsand the so-called basic skills. such asreading, writing. and computationThese skills are indeed basic to subse-quent educational development, forwithout them one could hardly be-come proficient in the academic disci-plines that one begins to encounter inthe middle school But reading. writ-

SEPTEMBER 1984

"Reasoning ...is not 'the fourth R' "

i

ing. speaking, listening. and computa-tion are actuallv incredibly complexand sophisticated megaskills. being or-chestrations of vast numbers of highlydiversified skills- and mental acts thathave previously been developed. Rea-soning is not another of these mega-skills: it is not "the fourth R." It is.instead, foundational, because it is fun-damental to their development. Yeteven these foundations. it turns out.are multi-leveled: and one of our ma-ior tasks is to unpack and order thegalaxt of cognitive components thatmust be marshalled in even a singleact of reading, writing. speaking. lis-tening, or computation.

A second misconception is that, aswe mature. our reasoning skills prolif-erate in quantity and improve greatlyin quality. No doubt this is partiaUtrue but not uholly so. Throughoutour lives we rely to a considerableextent upon the same primordial coreof reasoning skills: the basic reper-toire of reasoning skills of the adult isrelatively unchanged from that of thechild. We have found, for example.that the mean scores of college fresh-men are less than one point above themean scores of sixth graders on theNew Jersey Test of Reasoning Skills.The situation is somewhat analogousto that which prevails with respect to a

Programs for Teaching Thinking

Philosophy for Children

Developer: Matthew Lipman

Goal: Improve children's reasoning abilities byhaving them think about thinking as theydiscuss concepts of importance to them.

Sample skills: Drawing inferences, making analogies,forming hypotheses, classification.

Assumptions: * Children are by nature interested in philo-sophical issues such as truth, fairness,and personal identity.

* Children should learn to think for them-selves, to explore alternatives to theirown points of view, to consider evidence,to make careful distinctions and to be-come aware of the objectives of the edu-cational process.

Intended Audience: Children kindergarten through highschool.

Process: Students read special novels with inquisi-tive children as characters, followed byteacher-led discussion, using structureddiscussion plans, exercises, and games.

Time: Three- to 40-minute periods per week.

Available from: Institute for the Advancement of Philoso-phy for ChildrenMontclair State CollegeUpper Montclair, NJ 07043

-

l.z e [an auto: 1mechanic] uses

nolhing but thesesimple tools; but heuses them in such acalculating, strategicway as to solve themechanical problemthat we findincomprehensibleand insoluble."

person s svntactical repertoire Al-though the varietyr and complexirty ofhuman thinking is unlimited, the linguistic expression of these enormous-ly diversified thoughts relies on thesame set of basic syntactical structures.One employs the same subject-predi-cate structures and the same noun-verb structures whether one is a pro-fessor or a toddler Similarlyv, evenwhen we engage in the most elaboratekinds of thinking-long deductivechains, highly abstruse theoreticalconstructions, and the like--we dem-onstrate our familiarits with a relative-lN small number of mental acts, rea-soning skills, and inquirv skills uponwhich the more elegant and sophisti-cated thought operations are predicat-ed Without the fundamental abilities

to assume, suppose, compare. infer.contrast or judge, deduce or induce, toclassif', describe, define, or explain,one s verv abilities to read and writewould he imperiled, to say nothing ofone's capacities to engage in classrooxm discussion, prepare experiments. and compose prose or poetry

There is good reason to stress thecontinuit, of primar' and higher or-der reasoning skills The way in whichthat continuity occurs can perhaps bepresented best by analogy' Consideran auto mechanic at work in an autorepair shop tfis primary skills have todo with the use of the individual toolsin his tool kit. lie has one skill forusing a screwdriver, another for acrescent wrench, and still another forpliers These primary skills we share

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

I

with him; fior we too know how to usethese t(x)ls ahlhough we are perhapsnot as skillful But wve prohbabl do notknow--as he does-how to organizeand sequence tile use of these tools torepair the engine. lie uses nothing butthese simple tools; hut he uses them insuch a calculating, strategic vin' as tosolve the mechanical problem that wefind incomprehensible and insolubleIt is these skills of orchestration arndimprovisation, combined with an Ull-derstanding of hovwo the car is con-structed as a whole and an under-standing of tile mechanical problem.that make the difference between himand us So it is with reasoning skills-the primary ones we all possess or aresupposed to possess. The higher orderskills, however. are not different skills

in performing logical operations hutare concatenated ways of performingthe same operations Higher orderreasoning skills are not superimposedupon classification. finding assumllp-tions, drawing inferences. and so on.Rather, thev are skills used in engagingin highly sophisticated classification.definition, inference. and the like. bhemploying the reasoning skills colla-borativelv and concertedlv. rather thanin the individualized way we do ws henwe isolate them for studs

A Series of PhilosophyCourses

A number of educators call nomX acceptthe view that it is not enough forstudents simply to learn the content ofacademic disciplines: to be trul\ edu-cated. students must he able to tdimkein those disciplines For example. thesmust learn to think historicalhl . alge

i hraicall . and scientitically and notmerelv to memorize wxhat the\ weretaught in history. algebra. or science

___s____

_ A___11w11 R |_ *

_S S

A:SFrwrEMHER I 984

Mobi/J Ie tn

The notion persists, however, that theproper route to this goal involves theidentification of the reasoning and in-quiry skills appropriate to the practiceof each discipline and the subsequentassignment of the responsiblity forteaching such skills to the teachers ofthose disciplines. The teachers inthese areas contend, quite rightly, thatthev cannot take time out from theteaching of their disciplines to teachthe skills necessary to think in thosedisciplines. Such skills should havebeen acquired by the students earlier;one cannot wait until a discipline istaught for the students to acquire theskills necessary to learn it.

That is the reason a series of philos-ophy courses is needed throughoutthe K-12 school sequence The cultiva-tion of reasoning cannot be carriedout unless we use criteria drawn fromlogic to distinguish better thinkingfrom worse, and only philosophy pro-vides such criteria, just as it is onlyphilosophy that is experienced inteaching the role of reasoning in re-flection and discourse.

Philosophy is dialogical; to engagein philosophical dialogue puts a pre-mium on higher order thinking skills,simply in order to come to grips withthe logical, epistemological, ethical, oraesthetic aspects of the problems un-der discussion. Practice in such discus-sion fosters the development of suchskills in each and every participant Itwould be absurd to claim that onhlphilosophy cultivates classroom dis-cussions. But certainly the kinds ofdiscussions philosophy entails aremore likely to cultivate the higherorder skills than discussion in fieldsless concerned with fostering self-cor-recting methodologies of inquiry. Bydevoting a portion of each day todisciplined discussion of significantbut unclear concepts, schools of thefuture will see to it that both primaryand higher order thinking skills arereadied for use well before they areneeded, so that no student need entera classroom cognitively unprepared.

For more information, contact theInstitute for the Advancement of Phi-losophy for Children, Montclair StateCollege, Upper Montclair, New Jersey07043.

US. Postal Service

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION(Requ..d 4b 39 USC 3689)

LA. TrIlE OF FUBLICATION I. PUBICATION NO. 2. DAT OF FILINIGEduc-ionail ip I 1 1122/83

3. FREQUENCY OF 1U 3 NO. OF [ISSUl PUII- 31. ANNUAL SIB-March. Aprl Mv. Spember. Octo--r Normher UID ANNUALLY SIION RICEDemh-r F-urv A Io

4. COMPLETE MAILNG ADDRESS OF KNOWN OFF(CE OF PUBLICATION (rr6 Ctv. Cout: S a nd ZIP Cod*)(Aot pfi'ers

Aocain fohr Superam.on and Curriculum Devetpmr225 North WashintWon Srer. Andr. Virginh 22314

5. COMPLETE MAILANG ADDRESS OF THE HEADQUARTE

ROF GENEAL BUSI

MESS OFFICES OF TIl PULIHE

I

tr pmnr)

Associaimn for Supcrvoon and Curriculum Developmernt225 Nonth Warhmngton Slrte Ananda. Vlrinu a 22314

6 FLL NAMES AND COIETE MALNG ADDIRESS OF IPULSIIER EDITOR AND MANAGING EDITOR7,an it, vT ST NOT hr tk)

FUUSHER Vain, an-d C-np&r Ma.iRi Ad*al

Asocatlor fo- Supervson and Curriculum Devlopmren225 North Wrahinn Sn -trr"t. Aklndri. Virgina 22314

EDI (NA ind Codpee .amrinR AldkrtJRonald BranI225 North Washing1on Srr. Aleandr-. Virgtnia 22314

MANAGING EDITOR Nart and Conplae 1MarlirW Ad-)Nancy C Modrak225 North Waahlngton Srrer. Alexundria Virgina 22314

7. O ER rl/a'ned by a crpairao. s nam and adse ms le st ted and a/so immedme .l dmraund de nmeand adreses torocttldrs u owr kh I prro r or mirne d rom amounr a stoc tI/ no ot ned y a

onr t on e na am) ra s ,n odaeindual oimans brrgn If oanedby ai phre, or o°urnionrpa'mtedf,. ta nmn ard a, ha. as ueall a t t of dan , d ur indln musa r , en en i 7t e .on ipublsbedhnT a niorc ornran n. i smr a d aiss rmust he . lted u r) /ntm musr he corplrtted )

FULL NAME COMPLETE AILINGC ADDRFSS

A-.ooi.on 1fn Superslron and Cumculum erelopment 225 Nonh Wsh.hingrin SmAMrldrla VlrRinit 22H14

L KNOWN BONDHOLDERS, MORTGAGEES, AND OTnHI SICURITY HOLDERS OWNING OR HOLDING IPEICENT OR MORE OF TOTAL AMOUNT OF BONDS. MORTGAGES OR OTHER SECUlITES(I/ me am none. so ut,)

FULL NAME COMPLETE MALING ADDRESS

NONE

9. FO CO- O BY NoP- ORA-AIN su -~le TO Msw _.. SFE R .er(Sont 42 12 DMVd ort),)

The purpas funoion. and -mprofit stalus o. this oranlatlon and Ih. exenp starus r Fedrknl Inc.mc tax pur-ptrrleck one,

HAS NOT CHANGED DURING KAS CHANGED DURING 'If Npi b ern musri- sbm ;RECEDrD 12 MONTHS PLECEDING 12 MONTHS nnnon o- r ufb _ e -b & u

10. AVERAGE NO. COPIES ACTUAL )NO COmIES OFExTENT AND NATURE OF CIRCULATION EACH ISSUE DURING SINGLE LSUE P HED

PRECDING 12 MONTHS NEAREST TO FILING DATE

A. TOTAL NO. COPIES (Net PrnE Run) 49.6 5%.000

B. PAID CIRCLLATION 412 OI Sale through dealer and caerre trer

vendorc and c.utner sale,

2 Mll Subnrtpnon 46,204 51 545

C. TOTAL PAID CIRCULATION 46,616 51$45(Sum o' 10BI anrd OB62,

D. FREE DITRUION BY MAIL CARRIER 39 39ROR OTHER MErANSSAMIMS. COMPLIMENTARY AND OTHERFI COPIES

E. TOTAL DISTRIUION (5tm C antd D) 46.99 51 943

F. COnIS NOT DIrBuTE I 'I1 4.05-I Oice ue. klef oer. uncounted.

spoiled after pnntng

2 Retr from VNe, aents g 0)

G. TOTAL (Sum o E. F) and 2fould Pqual 48 m56 56.000ne pres nn so in A)

II. SIGNATURE AND m ITLE OF EDITOL. PULISHER.

I certffy d de aemens made by BUSINESS MANAGE. OR OWNERme rhe rre COrrft nd complete / ,. e B,- Businent Mrana

EDUCAnTIONAL LEADERSHIP

Copyright © 1984 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved.