Page Text: further development of desire to pursue justice, truth, beauty,
goodness etc
This ‘virtuous cycle’ also demonstrates the indispensability of such dualities as head and heart, ‘left-brain’ and ‘right-brain’, art/religion and science.
However there is a more dramatic possibility, suggested in this case by the Baha’i writings – that innate knowledge and insights are a result of being more or less in continuous relationship with God, whether or not we acknowledge that, or are conscious of it – the process is continuous, God-given, and the majority of what we know is simply ‘a gift’ (Abdu’l-Baha 1978 pp. 85-86). Similarly Baha’is see art as a gift of the holy spirit.
Abdu’l-Bahá said:
All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.
(Blomfield: 1954 p.167)
I return later to this possibility that knowledge is an outcome not just of intellectual efforts and book-learning, and genetics, but to a third function, that is of being human in the world, as part of God’s Creation.
The notion of subjective resonance will seem to some as risky. Tochon (1994 p. 1) raises the issue of risks in a narrative view of teacher education if related to the ‘I’ tradition of Subjective Idealism. The Self-constructionist perspective in education (p.239) might lead to dogmatism and indoctrination. His suggested solution (p.243) is the complementary use of constructivist and deconstructivist aspects of knowledge.
Both for the individual, and for the observer, risk is diminished through ‘internal’ efforts, and through the processes of open dialogue, in community. Tochon’s views also echo the whole emphasis in this thesis on keeping balanced the three forms of knowing ‘social-others-centred’, the ‘subjective-creative-mystical’ and the ‘objective-reasoning-scientific’ – the three voices of I, We and IT – all cultivated in the light of higher-order values.
The notion of subjective resonance is linked to the educational goal of enabling development of the authentic self, through the individual achieving her/his authentic voice. I don’t see this as ‘self-indulgence’, nor do I see it as in conflict with the service ethic that is at the core of the interpersonal. Religiously we can say that it enables God to manifest Himself more fully through the realization of each authentic voice (compositely the 3Cs). Psychologically it seems to me that the person who speaks without their authentic self is less likely to be of help to others than if they function authentically – just as a work of art has the best, unique, form in which to be, to resonate, to ‘speak’ – when created authentically. In any case each subjective expression is open to acceptance or rejection, and to examination via all the means possible for ‘verification’ – via any combination of a) the empirical, b) reasoning, c) tradition, d) intuition, e) consultation f) Revelation (see Diagram 3:2).
The connection with authenticity I see as flowing from, or corresponding to the notion of authentic education. Peter Abbs (1993 pp. 3-14) sees authentic education as requiring eight characteristics:
1) commitment to understanding;
2) seeing education as inherently valuable;
3) experiencing education as existential in the sense of the individual taking responsibility for something which cannot be bought or transferred but which can be released by the right agent including a teacher;
4) level of engagement (being utterly absorbed) – not just the mind but the whole personality;
5) recognising that education is open-ended and that of necessity we live with uncertainties with scientific theories only being provisional explanations;
6) being collaborative (in dialogue) both in the sense of wisdom passed down the ages, and as the trust and relations within the group or class or seminar;
7) recognising diversity including plurality in modes of understanding, ways of knowing;
8) acknowledging transcendence – moments in which one can sense abiding value and a sense of the ordinary self surpassing itself, seeming to be fully alive but in another realm.
In this thesis the means to the development of the authentic voice isseen as the use of SunWALK and the 4Cs. The more we as individuals mature, the more these forms of being and knowing authentically become personal goals – as well as the goals of one’s (enlightened) teacher.
I turn now to the concept-elements, that together constitute a conceptual framework for the SunWALK model, here presented as characteristics found within the discourse-communities, out of which came the four epiphanous, turning-point, experiences in my life as a would-be educator.
2:2 Conceptual gleanings from Holistic Education
The sub-field of Holistic Education – some definitions, and a tale of two Millers
This thesis I see as situated in the sub-field of education known as holistic education, and consequently I am presenting some issues concerning this particular discourse-community first, whereas in Chapter 1 the epiphanies were presented in chronological, order.
The two terms ‘holistic’ and ‘education’ as used here give rise to a tautological possibility in that, for me, they refer to the same thing; true, balanced, human development. That is, education that isn’t holistic isn’t truly and fully education. It would be more accurate to call mainstream education ‘less-than-holistic-education’, and then simply call holistic education ‘education’. However concern for connectedness, and for balance, is probably a safer way to approach the contrasting of mainstream education with holistic education. For example, it is unlikely that a child will go through mainstream education with no spiritual education, so the contrast might be better drawn in looking at the higher place for spiritual education that a holistic school might want to include in its curriculum.
Holistic isn’t in the dictionary (Collins Concise) but holism is: ‘any doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organization.’ There is no mention of holistic education – the field is very small! The more general field of holistic ‘philosophy’ that contributes to thinking and practice in holistic education is larger. It ranges from more respectable voices such as the physicists Bohm (1980) and Capra (1982) and even Einstein (Calaprice 2000), through to a plethora of relatively fringe voices.
A weakness of educational development is the paucity of alternatives. Outside of comprehensivisation itself, and the recent move of creating some specialist schools for children with particular talents, very few truly radical experiments in education have been conducted by any UK government. Internationally the only one in the private sector that is well known is A. S. Neil’s Summerhill. Yet if every government since the turn of the last century had kept going, in ten year cycles, a dozen ‘laboratory’ schools that were truly different in important ways, backed up by academics as partners, we might know more, and the evidence might be more lucid and accessible, at the ‘chalk-face’. Chief amongst the issues that might be explored would be ‘what does it/can it really mean to educate the whole child?’, and ‘from this what can we learn about moral education and spiritual education that are integral, rather then ‘bolt-on’ extras?’
The term holistic education then can be seen as a restoring or re-balancing perspective. The term holistic is relatively new. I had to wait until I met a Japanese professor of education in Mexico before I knew that it is generally considered that the first use of the term holism was by General Smuts (1926).
Most recently Ken Wilber (1998a p.67) has taken understanding of the holistic, and therefore holistic education, forward, including in his discussion of the term ‘holon’. For Wilber, a holon refers to an ‘entity’ that is itself a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole. Things and processes are not merely wholes, they are also parts of something else. They are whole/parts: a holon has to maintain both its wholeness and its ‘partness’ (examples below). These are all wholes, but also include subparts – but they are much more than their subparts. One reason he uses this term is to circumvent using the notion of hierarchy. He explains this whole-part view of the universe further as:
THE WHOLE/PARTS CONSTRUCTS
All the lower is in the higher, but not all the higher is in the lower. Examples:
1. Cells contain molecules but not vice versa
2. Molecules contain atoms but not vice versa
3. Sentences contain words, but not vice versa
4. A whole atom is part of a whole molecule, and the whole molecule is part of a whole cell, and the whole cell is part of a whole organism, etc.
It’s the ‘not vice versa’ that establishes a holon – an order of increasing wholeness.
Therefore ‘the Whole’ is that which contains all other holons, beyond which there is no other holon of which it is part – some use the term ‘God’, or the Whole, or Mystery.
From such thinking, I have developed the process term ‘holization’ to mean realization of connectedness that enables, and constitutes, the raising of consciousness, toward realization in wisdom and spiritual maturity. The realization of connectedness is assisted by many factors. For example effort by the individual, but also factors such as the quality of the classroom atmosphere, and the quality of the challenges to learning that the teacher sets. It is also a descriptive term for the development the learner ideally undergoes. Holization is seen as substantially synonymous with spiritualization and humanization, the terms being different ‘takes’ on the same whole-person, human development that I believe is, at one and the same time, true (full and complete) education generally, and spiritual education in particular.
Probably no one has done more to nurture the development of the contemporary global holistic community than Jack Miller. Holistic education and holism are, says Miller (1992 p. 6):
a person-centred perspective concerned with the fullest possible development of authentic personhood. ….holism is a recognition of interconnectedness, context and meaning in all phenomena; it is a radical critique of the reductionism, technicism and Cartesian dualism that have alienated modern consciousness from the natural world and from a deep existential sense of meaning and wholeness.
For the other major voice in holistic education, Ron Miller (1992), holistic education is not any one technique or curriculum. Holistic education nurtures the development of the whole person. It revolves around relationships between learners, between young people and adults. It is concerned with life experience, not with narrowly defined “basic skills.” Education is growth, discovery, and a widening of horizons; it is an engagement with the world, a quest for understanding and meaning. It enables learners to critically approach the cultural, moral, and political contexts of their lives.
Holistic education, says Ron Miller (1991 pp.1-3), does not focus on determining which facts or skills adults should teach children, but on creating a learning community which will stimulate the growing person’s creative and inquisitive engagement with the world, nurturing healthy, whole, curious persons, who can learn whatever they need to know in any new context.
Of Ron Miller’s many contributions in addition to his writings, his launching of the journal, Holistic Education Review, now renamed Encounter; education for meaning and social justice, is possibly the most important, along with his publishing of books (see http://www.great-ideas.org/ ).
The contributions by the two Millers have enabled the development of a community of theorist-practitioners in the US, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia and the UK, and elsewhere. Some are predominantly theorists, some predominantly practitioners, the majority are both. They hold regular conferences, regionally, nationally and internationally. In Canada and Mexico, you can study for one, or more, of the following in Holistic Education; short courses, first degree courses, MAs and doctorates. However the number of theorist-practitioners in the field of Holistic Education is still very small. In addition there are those who contribute to books, even though in academic terms they are probably situated in one or more other fields. The deafness of mainstream authorities is extreme in the US, as in the UK.
There is that larger field that concerns the theory of holism, and then yet another whole set of fields that includes the ecological and environmental, teacher education, religion and spirituality etc. from which people draw in order to build up the philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings for holistic education. Roger Stack’s diagram that maps the intellectual influences that have resulted in the Holistic Education community is very useful (see Appendix D) in obtaining a broad overview of some of the field’s influences and contributory writers and practitioners.
The two Millers have continued as the two faithful mainstays of the development of the North American, and now global, holistic education community, and are its two most important theorists, Jack for the breadth of overall conceptualization, established in some dozen books and more than 50 chapters and papers. His university Department, Toronto, has also supervised more than 50 doctorates in holistic education, art education and allied subjects.
Ron a free-lance educationalist, with a shorter list of publications, is a comparable figure because of the depth and quality of his philosophical underpinning, and his all-round support of the movement.
The notion of ‘ holistic education’
There are a variety of reasons why someone might reject the notion of holistic education. Some see education as rightly having a largely utilitarian purpose. Some fear the whole idea of the spiritual dimension of education – indeed America continues to be virtually paranoid about the issue. Others simply see moral and spiritual development as the responsibility of the home.
I have found few serious evaluations of holistic education but one by Terry McLaughlin (in Best (ed) 1996 pp. 9-19) is particularly useful. In a complex review of what ‘whole’ and ‘holism’ and ‘spiritual’ might mean, McLaughlin says the following:
Although there is some substance in the descriptive claim that education is as a matter of fact, of the whole child, the prescriptive claim that education should be of this kind is not redundant.
Similarly I also have come to the conclusion that education is inevitably and invariably holistic in one sense: the child is whole. However the teaching may not be. Consequently ‘whole’ aspects of the ‘whole’ child may be undernourished, and atrophy. These might include the moral, the spiritual, the social, the political and so on.
McLaughlin (ibid.) suggests support for the ‘should’ line of argument under the ‘desire for comprehensiveness’ value. e.g. including critical questioning of memorization. This inevitably focuses on skills. Without rejecting this desire for comprehensiveness of skills, I want the comprehensiveness to be focused on those central issues within the being and becoming of the person, which is to say that the 4Cs are more than just concern for skills. My view here is summed up by saying that no reasonably normal child is ever less than ‘whole’, even if s/he has sustained some damage, or lack of development in some areas, but the educational experience s/he is receiving may be ill-suited to balanced development of all of the (positive) dimensions of being human.
The need for whole-person sub-models and processes
We need to ask which elements are necessary for something to constitute holistic education. How many are necessary, without which a claim would fail? I also suggest that the question, “What is it that makes of the parts a whole?”, is essential in evaluating anything that claims to be a holistic model of education. My answer is SunWALK and the 4Cs, and I suggest that for the model as a whole my answer, is ‘consciousness’. By this I mean staying conscious of the whole, and of the parts, what some people mean by mindfulness. We could also answer, ‘love’, or ‘wisdom’, or ‘realization of connectedness’ or ‘concern for the needs of others’ – by ‘consciousness’ I mean to include all of these.
Holistic Education and moral education
Given the perspective that sees spiritualization, holization and humanization as three ‘takes’ on a single process, the view of education presented here sees moral education as fully integrated, and a natural outcome of true, balanced, education.
SunWALK is both a general model of education, particularly its pedagogical process, and at the same time a model of moral education. Moral education, like holistic education requires development in all of the following: caring, creativity and criticality, and being, and serving, in community – all undertaken within an ability to draw inspiration from spiritual sources, and thereby to have the will to act morally. Caring is seen as providing opportunities for the development of moral sensibility in the form of the ability to empathize, to have a conscience and to have a sense of solidarity. Criticality is seen as contributing abilities in sorting distinctions and applying logic. Creativity is seen as contributing the same qualities as caring but via artistic expression. The community is seen as contributing the arena in which we are challenged morally and in which we act morally, if we have the will so to do. We often need a reason to be good, which is why I see ‘will’ as something that can be increased if we have an increase in what we are attracted to through loving and knowing.
2:3 Conceptual gleanings from Baha’i teachings and Perennial Philosophy
The model presented here, at least as a framework, is intended to be inclusive, and open to use in a wide variety of settings, and perhaps cultures, and to be inclusive of a diversity of individuals. Of course, it includes some non-negotiable principles – it could not for example accept racism, it could not accept bullying, it could not accept sexism.
Central to the need for antidote, or prophylactic to negatives, is the notion of the need for a ‘Sun’ in any model that intends to be holistic. The ‘Sun’ is intended as a symbolic representation of the source of inspiration, illumination and guidance that a person gains, particularly for answering the great existential questions, and for matters such as moral guidelines, for nurturing the will to act morally, and to act in other good ways. But such guidance doesn’t have to be just the Messengers of God – footballers who make a stand against racism, e.g. are functioning as part of many a youngster’s guiding light. The symbolic meaning of ‘Sun’ in the model lies in Sun as both the external source of values, e.g. the Humanist canon of relevant writings, or a body of religious scripture, but it also refers to the internalization of those influences that gave rise to the person’s conscience, values and moral sensibility.
My own source has been Baha’i teachings, and what in more general terms is known as ‘perennial philosophy’. The next section describes how some principles apparent in my reading of Baha’i teachings, are important for the SunWALK model.
To provide a reading of all of the extensive available primary and secondary Baha’i literature3 is not possible, since it is vast. For reasons of space I have developed a compilation of relevant extracts from Baha’i writings and placed them in the Appendices (see Appendix E).
My solution to the difficulty of summarizing oceans of writings is to do two things. Firstly, the above-mentioned compilation. Secondly I here present a ‘reading’ of a particular passage from Baha’i teachings. This ‘take’ on Baha’i teachings, relevant to education, is a view based on my own forty years of reading those writings, whilst working in various kinds of education. The view, a process and dialogic view of reality, also contributes powerfully to the need to find a notion that unites the three or four epiphanies from within my autobiographic first chapter. By ‘unites’ I mean answers the question, “What if anything do those epiphanies, and their relevant communities of discourse, have in common?” This unity is also important in answering the question, “What is it that makes of the parts a whole?” My answer which I present in the final chapter is that to raise consciousness they are all dialogic, and dialectic, and I therefore coin the term Dialectical Spiritualization (see section 5:1).
I now present a particular passage translated from the writings of Abdu’l-Baha (1976 p.79)
A reading of principles, evident in a passage from Baha’i teachings, relevant to the creation of a spiritualizing pedagogy
I have chosen the particular passage since it seems, in just a few lines, to indicate principles for almost a complete model of education, the spirit of which is I believe not only true to a wide reading of Baha’i writings, but also to the spirit of the SunWALK model.
I added numbers and section headings, but have not otherwise altered the original text. The passage reads:
1 GOAL = HUMAN DEVELOPMENT – Among these children many blessed souls will arise, if they be trained according to the Baha’i Teachings.
2 DEFINING METAPHOR – If a plant is carefully nurtured by a gardener, it will become good, and produce better fruit.
3 AIMS = GREATER INSIGHT, AND SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY These children must be given a good training from their earliest childhood. They must be given a systematic training which will further their development from day to day, in order that they may receive greater insight, so that their spiritual receptivity be broadened. Beginning in childhood they must receive instruction.
4 METHOD 1 = PLAY, NOT BOOK LEARNING – They cannot be taught through books. Many elementary sciences must be made clear to them in the nursery; they must learn them in play, in amusement.
5 METHOD 2 = THE PRIMACY OF THE ORAL – Most ideas must be taught them through speech, not by book learning. One child must question the other concerning these things, and the other child must give the answer. In this way, they will make great progress. For example, mathematical problems must also be taught in the form of questions and answers. One of the children asks a question and the other must give the answer.
6 ONE MEASURE OF SUCCESS = Later on, the children will of their own accord speak with each other concerning these same subjects.
7 REWARD PROGRESS AT ALL LEVELS – The children who are at the head of the class must receive premiums. They must be encouraged and when any one of them shows good advancement, for the further development they must be praised and encouraged therein.
8 SAME PRINCIPLES FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS FOR ‘MAINSTREAM’ EDUCATION – Even so in Godlike affairs.
9 QUESTIONING EACH OTHER = DISCUSSION (NOT ONE ASSUMES PRE-DIGESTED DE-CONTEXTUALIZED INFORMATION) – Oral questions must be asked and the answers must be given orally. They must discuss with each other in this manner.
These nine principles are now discussed in a little more depth.
1 GOAL = HUMAN DEVELOPMENT – “Among these children many blessed souls will arise, if they be trained according to the Baha’i Teachings.”
The social goal of the Baha’i Faith as a movement is seen as the same as any other manifestation of the Holy Spirit, via the other Messengers of God, that is to increase human potential through which the process of spiritualization, and higher forms of civilization, can be taken forward. This is related to a range of practical concerns such as the abolition of extremes of wealth and poverty, a world monetary system, environmental sustainability, establishing agencies for global action etc.
The personal goal for the individual is to acquire virtues, that is to manifest qualities, or Names and Attributes of God, that are inherent in her/his nature. But this personal goal is not something to be pursued selfishly. Instead it is pursued through participation in service to humankind, as part of the interpersonal. As in John Dewey’s My Pedagogic Creed (1897 p.3), the service ethic is seen as vital. Most people who work with youth in the Baha’i community place emphasis on the service ethic, and it has also become a recognized form of learning in the wider community, where it is known as ‘service learning’.
2 DEFINING METAPHOR – “If a plant is carefully nurtured by a gardener, it will become good, and produce better fruit.”
The gardening metaphor is frequently used by Abdu’l-Baha and is central in his approach to education. The use of the term ‘nurture’ within the gardening metaphor is particularly interesting since I see as a ‘feminine’ term, but not a gender specific one. I associate nurturing with the influence of Nel Noddings in Caring; a feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984), and The Challenge to Care in Schools (1992) and Gilligan’s (1998) approach to a morality based on recognition of needs, relation and response.
Perhaps ‘nurturing’ might have served Noddings better, to avoid the snidy account of her work in Winch and Gingell (1999) in which they say (pp. 97-98):
she seems to be trading upon an ambiguity in the concept of ‘care’. So in one sense to be told to care for another is simply to be told to take them fully into account. Such a sense is recognizable in Kant’s injunction to treat everyone as ends in themselves and not merely as means…. In another sense ‘caring’ characterises the special relationship between friends or members of a family…if she is.. suggesting that what we need is the second sense of care applied to everyone… such a proposal seems to empty the notion of ‘care’ of determinate sense…(If we) treat everyone as friend how are we supposed to treat our friends?
You can feel the sense of smug and small-minded satisfaction lifting off the page from these two men. Within narrow logic they are right, but the whole point about the feminine, and feminist approach, is that care, ethics and education, needs to be based on more than logic and reason – if we are to create balance, in men and women. The point about nurturance, is that it is about person to person responding, and other-centredness, in the Buber (1958) I-Thou sense. In nurturance we recognize being and becoming, we are not simply after information. A personal example is a boy in a Year 7 class who was a brilliant cartoonist – almost at a professional level. Generally in English he was a bit talkative, and didn’t produce work of the calibre that I though would do him justice. So I kept up the pressure on him. But upon reflection, and based on what he gave me in Year 8, he was doing what a chrysalis does before it emerges as a butterfly – he was going through a growth stage. Now thankfully the pressure I put on him was not dis-proportionate or unkind, but I only realised what was going on after the event and it taught me a lesson.
I take the gardening metaphor, and nurturance, to be apposite to both the Baha’i view and also to the model that I develop here. Nurturance isn’t an argument for the illogical, but it is an argument for logic being insufficient because it doesn’t admit other ways of knowing. However Winch and Gingell (p.134) also say something I never expected to hear from such men, and which states beliefs central to my model:
Those who argue that it (learning) is social, affective and dependent on circumstances are themselves making a kind of generalization. But even they, it could be argued might be missing something easily missed in the scientific temper of our times, namely the possibility that there is an element that is utterly mysterious about our ability to learn, something that is hinted at in our everyday understanding of the power of love to transform both the lover and the object that is loved. If we fail to grasp this, it might be argued, we fail to understand how learning is also concerned with the pursuit of excellence or perfection. One needs to go back to Plato for such an insight.
In SunWALK I refer to the fact that mystery is at the heart of the model, because being human is at its heart. At the heart of being human there is, for Baha’is, and many others, the mystical feeling that unites us with God, that is the core of religious faith (see Lights of Guidance p. 507). That we are mysterious at our centre, as well as God transcendentally being Mystery, is suggested in the Koranic saying to which Baha’u’llah refers:
Man is My mystery, and I am his mystery.
(Baha’u’llah: The Kitab-i-Iqan, Page: 101)
Correspondingly learning, in all the ways that really matter to this spiritualizing pedagogy, is as much a mystery as something known – in the sense that the ‘knowledge’ in automotive engineering is known. More correctly, learning in being and becoming human is a mixture of the known and knowable, and the unknown and unknowable – but contemporary education4 makes little use of ever-present mystery – which is a bit like being a stage lighting designer and not recognizing that darkness, as well as lights, are part of the medium that is being used.
3 AIMS = GREATER INSIGHT, AND SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY “These children must be given a good training from their earliest childhood. They must be given a systematic training which will further their development from day to day, in order that they may receive greater insight, so that their spiritual receptivity be broadened. Beginning in childhood they must receive instruction.”
From my perspective this is the most problematic passage because of the term ‘training’ when applied to the (holistic) education of children, at least in the sense currently the global Baha’i community doesn’t seem to want to distinguish between education and training. At worst it seems to want to lay aside the former in favour of the latter, as in the currently widely-used ‘Ruhi programme’ in which people are taken through passage after passage of scripture and have, automaton-like, to complete cloze procedures, something which seems to be in complete contradiction to a range of teachings (see Appendix E).
There are many references in Baha’i Writings to training and trainer as well as educator, but I am not sure that trainer carries quite the same import as educator when presented by Baha’u’llah (1949, pp. 189-190) as one of the names and attributes of God:
Consider, for instance, the revelation of the light of the Name of God, the Educator,
If the two are supposed to be synonymous why does Abdu’l-Baha (1991) distinguish between the two, and ‘teacher’ in the following?:
Christ was an Educator, a Teacher and Trainer of nations
Whether they are or are not intended to be synonymous then the principles as laid out in the passage upon which this section is based still indicate principles more akin to education than training.
It is possible that training and education in the Baha’i writings do not come with the same baggage that they carry in Western education, and there may be issues to do with translation that have yet to come to light. Training in the West is also a highly politicised term (see Abbs: 1993a)
Training tends to be something arranged for you and designed to get you to comply with what someone else has previously decided is correct and desirable, as in army or police training. Education is about manifesting the ‘gems’ that are within as in Baha’u’llah’s (1946 p.260):
Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.
In the second Arabic Hidden Word (see discussion of justice in the Introduction) we can see that true spiritual knowing cannot be achieved unless we have become God’s confidant, unless he ‘speaks’ to us so that we know our own knowledge, not the opinions of others. However the error-prone subjectivity of our ‘hearing’ brings with it the responsibility to compare what we think we have ‘heard’, to Baha’i scriptures, using reason and justice. I see this as a matter of self-knowledge, (“He hath known God who hath known himself.” (Baha’u’llah: 1946 p.178) but also of recognizing the God within, Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting. (Baha’u’llah 1932/1975 p.13), and then of using all available means to evaluate what is knowingly felt. Of course there is a resolution and that is the one central to SunWALK. Recognizing that training is appropriate in certain cases, the issue is how it relates to education. SunWALK argues for the technical to take place within the context of education, that is therefore for training to be seen as a sub-set of education.
4 METHOD 1 = PLAY NOT BOOK LEARNING – “They cannot be taught through books. Many elementary sciences must be made clear to them in the nursery; they must learn them in play, in amusement.”
I suspect that the term ‘sciences’ here is best understood as ‘subjects of systematized information and skills’, rather than what is termed physics and the like, though concepts within the former became the foundation of the latter as in, play is the mothers’ milk of the intellect (The Observer newspaper 4.7.99 Dr P R Rowland). It is clear that in the early years play is the medium of learning. We might understand ‘elementary sciences’ as concepts, procedures and processes that are fundamental to later forms of learning, that can be learned via games and structured play. (Concepts, such as ascending order and descending order, can be learned through a game, as can forms of sequencing, in different kinds of stories).
These are extraordinary statements given the time and circumstances of Abdu’l-Baha’s life. They echo the best practice of the best early years education of children – steadfastly ignored by the UK government with its obsession with control, and forced early reading, etc.
5 METHOD 2 = THE PRIMACY OF THE ORAL – “Most ideas must be taught them through speech, not by book learning. One child must question the other concerning these things, and the other child must give the answer. In this way, they will make great progress. For example, mathematical problems must also be taught in the form of questions and answers. One of the children asks a question and the other must give the answer.”
For decades concern with the primacy of the oral has been an issue within the teaching of English. In general the importance of oral work and verbal facility as the foundation of mature thought and writing has never been sufficiently recognized – particularly by some outside of the teaching of English.
Excessive reliance on forms of group work, some dubious, coupled with worsening behaviour has meant that many teachers had not been able, willing or skilled to do whole-class teaching – until forced to reform through the National Literacy Strategy. Philosophy for Children is an answer to this problem, but is difficult to make it work with badly behaved, or over-large classes. Correspondingly good critical work on literature is also vital in oral development, and therefore in thinking and writing capability.
This is not to set aside the importance of books, but more a matter of how to establish the best foundation for later learning through books. The appropriate sequence very often is, speech – reading – writing.
6 ONE MEASURE OF SUCCESS = “Later on, the children will of their own accord speak with each other concerning these same subjects.”
One reason for supposing this to be true is that middle-school children, in my experience, will come up and say something like, “You remember that yesterday we were saying that such and such is true, well I’ve thought of another argument….” Another is that children have been willing to give up both their play break, and their dinner break, in order to pursue themes that were running during a preceding lesson. I can’t think of a better indicator of success in teaching, but finding a humane way for OFSTED to police it isn’t easy – almost by definition that which is most important in education is difficult, or impossible to measure.
“What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So, now we measure how well we have taught what is not worth learning!”
Costa: (1988 )
7 REWARD PROGRESS AT ALL LEVELS – “The children who are at the head of the class must receive premiums. They must be encouraged and when any one of them shows good advancement, for the further development they must be praised and encouraged therein.”
Nothing succeeds like success, the best should have rewards, but everyone should receive encouragement. To encourage is to give courage to help children to dare in small ways. To us such challenges are small, but might be major for the child – like putting forward a view in a discussion class.
Here I recall the occasion, on the CD, when I gave a ‘Recommendation’ (10 merit marks), to the girl who came up with, “We must first ask what is a story,” in answer to my question, “What is the question we really should be asking?” She had sat and listened silently all through, engrossed in the discussion, and the additional challenges that I was throwing in, and she only spoke when she had the answer that no other boy or girl had worked out. She was the girl who the previous year, when she was twelve, had sent me a Christmas card saying, “Thanks Mr P. for showing me that I can do anything in English.” This was the greatest single reward I ever received in four decades of teaching. Encourage – it even works both ways – and unwittingly.
The boys, who had been making all the running and contributing magnificently, (but who never came up with that answer) howled, not very seriously, at what they protested was an excessive, unfair, reward. She never bothered to pick up this extrinsic reward – in Year 8 there is a mixture of childhood and adulthood, and consequently a mixture of interest in extrinsic and intrinsic rewards.
8 SAME PRINCIPLES FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS FOR ‘MAINSTREAM’ EDUCATION – “Even so in Godlike affairs.”
From this I take the view that the methods and processes of religious education should be the same as the principles, and processes that Abdu’l-Baha has described for general education. But within this thesis I go further and point out that the dialectic, and dialogic, is not just a principle of educational process but the way that human beings best function in relation to themselves, their fellows and their God – this can also be seen as the way that God functions, via Logos and Mythos, Yin and Yang, etc. in relation to the ongoing expression of His Creation.
9 QUESTIONING EACH OTHER = DISCUSSION (NOT, ONE ASSUMES, PRE-DIGESTED, DE-CONTEXTUALIZED INFORMATION) – “Oral questions must be asked and the answers must be given orally. They must discuss with each other in this manner”.
Fundamentalists, might interpret this question and answer method as – teacher asks, “When did the Baha’i Faith start?” Boy Number 11, “1844.” Girl Number 17 stand up, and ask Boy Number 4 that question!” ……… The antidote can be found between the lines in the message of Dickens’ Hard Times, and the slim volume by the philosopher A N Whitehead, called The Aims of Education (1961), but I am still not sure how to open the heart of such a ‘black-and-white’, reductionistic, fundamentalist thinker or more importantly, prevent them, in some legitimate way, from rising up power hierarchies.
For me, the Philosophy for Children programme is the greatest expression of the spirit of the above passage by Abdu’l-Baha and it is directly in line from Socrates, about whom Baha’u’llah said:
He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it…… Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters.
(Baha’u’llah: Tablets of Baha’u’llah, MARS database, p.146)
These principles found in this single passage by Abdu’l-Baha are taken up and built into the SunWALK model, not least is the emphasis on the discursive and dialectical which ultimately is expressed as Dialectical Spiritualization (see Chapter 5).5
I turn now, in 2.4 to examine some relevant issues in ‘teaching English’, which along with dance, drama and the fine arts, is seen as a primary source for the creative.6
2:4 Conceptual Gleanings from Being A Teacher Of English
Introduction: the four ‘C’s, SunWALK and English as the source of creativity
The 4 Cs combine the intrapersonal (‘caring’, ‘creativity’ and ‘criticality’) and the interpersonal (‘community’ – that is ‘within social relationships’). Education is seen as nurturing and challenging development in ‘technical’ abilities, everything from functional literacy to advanced engineering, but within the 4Cs framework of positive development of the human spirit. In English the 4Cs need also to be related to
a) the content that is chosen,
b) the processes that are used and
c) the person of the teacher and the ambience and ecology s/he creates. SunWALK is the what of the model and the 4Cs are the how, the processes.
I developed the name SunWALK, since it serves as both a mnemonic and an acronym. It encapsulates the following:
1) the aim of the model, of developing people toward being Willing, and Wise, Loving and Knowing ‘actors’– who at least will do little harm and at best will be agents of unity, peace, justice and positive development for others.
2) the aim of the ancient virtue of wisdom as in;
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom:
and with all thy getting get understanding. – Proverbs 4:7
Make wisdom your life’s goal. (Proverbs 4:20-22)
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom. (Greek Proverb)
….set then yourselves towards His holy Court, on the shore of His
mighty Ocean, so that the pearls of knowledge and wisdom, which God hath stored up within the shell of His radiant heart, may be revealed unto you…. (Baha’u’llah: Proclamation of Baha’u’llah, pp. 8-9)
Within SunWALK, by wisdom I mean; the state of maturity in which one can think and feel and act from a ’large picture perspective’, informed by sufficient experience, and by love and knowledge, and other such virtues of heart and mind.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1955 pp. 68-9) helps make the link between understanding of reality, wisdom, and the making of meaning:
To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.
3) the view that Will, rather than being some separate psychological ‘organ’, is best seen as an outcome of inner integrity of the cognitive and affective, that is the consequence of what we Love and what we Know – where the life-force, as drives, are directed to worthy forms of attraction, thereby giving us high motivation.
When we are able to know and love that which is just, and true and good and beautiful then we have the motivation to act. We are, positively, what we love and what we know, minus whatever negatives are holding us back. (Darkness is seen as the absence of light.) Progress in education and personal development is a reduction of darkness and an increase of light. Will, and motivation, are functions of the strength (and virtue) of what attracts us, in addition to in-built drives. Increasing our love for, and knowledge of positives, can also enable us to ‘let go’ of attachment to negatives, that reduce our will to achieve.
When we learn to feed ourselves with the ‘fruits’ of wisdom, and the core virtues, we can increase our will to achieve. These are unfashionable views in a post-modern world but here I argue that we need not only to re-establish a living relationship with the wisdom, and ‘virtues’, of the past but also that that same wisdom, re-applied in a post post-modern perspective, is what is needed. That perspective is seen in the answer given to the post-modern view that there are no longer any meta-narratives. The answer here is, “Yes there is, and that meta-narrative is in the fact that we all, more or less, are struggling in being and becoming positively human (as set out by the great Teachers of the past), here in the world with others and our happiness lies in recognizing that we need to serve each other in support of that struggle.” That central reality has not changed, and out of it we must form solutions, or perish.
4) a broad notion of the interiority of the human spirit, ‘heart-mind’, in which the singleness of conscious human being, comes to engage with self, others or the world-at large, in caring or creative, or critical, ways. Creativity seems to arise from the ‘space’ between loving and knowing, affect and cognition, but is a mode separate to the caring or critical, largely synonymous with the mystical. Like a number of other aspects of being human, such as consciousness and the mind-body problem, it remains partly knowable and partly mysterious – creations come from we know not where, their origin, and their formation even, is a process not open to even the artist.
The model takes the view that both the outer world and the inner world will remain a mystery, even though continuous unfoldment into deeper knowing takes place.
Mystery is to be lived with – in ourselves, in others and in the world-at-large – and also, if we are believers, as the ultimate mystery, God. Mystery is not a puzzle to be solved but a reality to be lived (see Armstrong 1999 and 2000). Much literature, including the mythological, comes out of mystery, and it provides room for the non-rational, irrational, and part-conceived, to have a place to be. Creativity arises from human beings being human, and that is beyond the rational, arising from the sub-consciousness, even though consciousness and the rational are needed as supporting partners.
Creativity as English, but more than English
Creativity is one of the elements in the core model and my source of creativity is in English but, the arts generally are seen as means to developing creativity. Creativity here is seen as expression of subjective knowing, and viewpoint, via an art medium. With greater social purpose we could define it as disciplined expression of subjective engagement with reality, (preferably) for the good of the whole.
My view of English is shaped by a philosophy that was embedded in how I was taught at Bulmershe college and, although more recent post-modernist philosophy has modified my view, much of what I came to believe about English then, remains true for me now.
When I was at my teacher education college English was much shaped by F. R. Leavis, and T S Eliot’s notions of the Great Tradition of English Literature, in which great texts, over long periods of critical assessment, gradually emerged from their second and third rate peers. One of the later criticisms is that this predominantly pre-war view is elitist, and inescapably linked to the class system, and other such undesirable realities. I take the view that the Great Tradition is still the Great Tradition even if it was elitist. There is no point in judging the past with values that one might want to uphold in the present. A parallel exists in history. If the histories written in the past came out of an elitist and non-egalitarian society, as they did, are we to reject all insights, perspectives and accounts thereby generated? I prefer to think that we stay connected, but now accept the responsibility of seeing the ‘literary landscapes’, that Eliot talked about, from the vantage point of contemporary current values, in which other voices are now part of the whole song7.
The second reason for not rejecting the notion of the Great Tradition is that my answer to the question ‘what is the greatest literature’ is the reply that it is ‘the literature that nourishes best over the longest periods of time’.
The third reason is that the health of a society rests upon its ability to maintain a sense of identity, from a knowledge of its past, and, in particular, a knowledge of the best thoughts, sayings and deeds from the past. This of course is how Matthew Arnold defined culture. Culture is acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.8
When we lose a living relationship with the best that has been known and said, we are lost, things fall apart, the centre will not hold, as Yeats says in his poem, The Second Coming. This bears resemblance to the human individual who has lost her or his memory – memory, to a large degree is who we are, and enables our functional integrity.
In my philosophy, English is also about the transmission of values and cultural frameworks through appreciation, but also through creative writing. These two, appreciating and creating, form their own essential dialogue in the development of abilities, and in the development of the person. Pressures from the National Curriculum have meant that not only has the time given to English been constrained, but the purposes of it have been seriously altered in a utilitarian direction. At worst English has been seen as simply a means to the end of ‘delivering’ other subjects. This seems to be more true in the primary sector, where specialist English teachers exist in smaller numbers. It is not the case that the utilitarian has no importance, but it is the case that it is not a worthy primary organizing idea for arranging learning challenges. The utilitarian concerns develop best as a by-product to high motivation in the expression of the creative. One creative challenge I used with 12 year-olds was, “Go and write the thirteenth episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’. I want the scripts close to BBC standards. The best five will be acted and videoed,” had, I found, astonishing results in terms of motivation and ‘by-product’ learning.
In addition to creativity via the appreciation of and the writing of poetry, stories, and drama, I have always been interested in the more visual arts and have tried to include them, in the teaching of English. These have included Film and TV Studies in which I was trying to respond to the neglected, but now 40 year old argument, that children should be taught a) ‘visuacy’ and b) ‘discrimination in popular culture’.
In the two concerns of appreciation and creativity, English brings together the two modes of criticality and creativity, and of objectivity and subjectivity. I choose to narrow the notion of creativity in the model to ‘subjective expression via an art’, firstly because I want to save it from the ‘tricky-Dicky’ view of creativity, as often taught on management training courses – ‘how many uses can you think of for a telephone directory’. Secondly, I want to give emphasis to what I shall call ‘feminine’ or ‘right-brain’ factors, so as to redress what I see as a current imbalance – (see appendix for ‘Balancing Dualities’). The third reason is that creativity as art starts as feeling that is synonymous with the spiritual.
Creativity in the model is seen as expression, as another of way of ‘reading’ and communicating reality. This narrower view of creativity is also intended to ensure a redress the imbalance between left-brain criticality, (itself not taught well in many schools), and ‘right-brain creating’, via the arts. I am aware that broader claims for creativity are made.
Howard Gardner describes creativity as “an interactive dialectic” and defines it in terms of a lively process that occurs between individual, domain and field:
The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting. (Gardner, 1993, p.35).
This, curiously, is precisely what I mean by ‘learning through a whole person dialectical process’ – so Gardner’s definition of creativity is actually my definition of learning, and knowledge development. But here creativity is the ability to assemble images, words, dance etc., to express subjective knowing, to explain what it is like to be that person, to have lived her or his life. I include the non-visual arts, but I particularly want to emphasize the imagistic. Dance is important because it keeps ‘heads’ and mind connected to the body and to the earth. I would see it as a daily activity for children – a way of processing and exploring and expressing, and consolidating, what is learned as ‘Geographical knowledge’, or ‘Historical knowledge’ etc.
In SunWALK, then I focus on creativity as subjective expression, via an artistic medium, in order to ensure a place for subjective expression, subjective knowing and a subjective connection to reality. This is much more than novelty and invention – although I recognize the need for innovation in technical areas such as product design. My emphases derive from the view that we want the child to express the subjective, the imagistic, and to have a balanced amount of time working in this way so as to create, along with the critical and the caring, learning in depth, realization of understanding in connectedness, the raising of consciousness – for whole-person learning, not just utilitarian learning, This creative teaching is to develop the authentic via, the ‘I’ voice.
The Creative Voice as one of Wilber’s three voices – in SunWALK (SW)
The expression of the subjective self, via the arts, (using the right-brain, as well as left-brain) – is the ‘I’ voice in Wilber’s triad of voices (Wilber 1999 p. 50-52). The other two ‘voices’ he describes as ‘We’ and ‘It’ voices:
‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘it’. Or the aesthetics of ‘I’, the morals of ‘we’ and the ‘its’ of science. The Beautiful, Good and the True; first-person, second-person and third-person accounts; self, culture and nature; art, morals and science.
Wilber’s insights correspond with the three intrapersonal ‘primary colours’ of the human spirit as presented here: the Caring, the Creative and the Critical.
Subjective expression, first person ‘aesthetics’ as Wilber refers to it, is the means by which the individual is able to express, “This is how it is, or has been, for me,” or “This is how I see it, and experience it.”
This subjectivity, in SunWALK, is also taken to the ‘forum’ of philosophical inquiry and there, in dialogue, is exposed to other subjectivities, and to established ‘objective’ public perspectives, e.g. as in, “Tillich holds this view of X – how far do we agree with that?” Having dialogue with other subjectivities, or with established objective knowing, creates the antitheses that makes the process dialectical. From such encounters we may create new syntheses, new ways of construing the given issue.
*Art, literature and islands of knowledge and shorelines of mystery.
Art is seen as the cultural means through which individuals develop their subjective ‘voice’ and thereby develop one way to gain insight into reality. Two definitions that I find helpful in relation to the educational model presented here are, firstly,
Art is culturally significant meaning, skilfully encoded
in an affecting, sensuous medium.
Richard Anderson quoted in Freeland (2001 p. 77)
Secondly there is the idea that art is an emotion controlled by an idea, another way of talking about spirit and form, which the Rabbi Cardozo9 links to life itself, where he says:
Life, after all, is an art, and art is an emotion controlled by an idea.
I see teaching as an art, and the teacher as an artist – one that works with the human spirit, her/his own, and the spirit of those taught – hence SunWALK, and the 4Cs, is centred on the human spirit as the flow of spirit-as-energy. The image is more of the teacher as dancer, poet or Tai Chi master, rather than of technician, or machine-minder, or ‘banker of information-as-cash’ dispenser. S/he enables the 4Cs to dance in beautiful, meaning-full ways.
English gave me the means to be critical and creative and to pass those capabilities on to children, although the ability to nurture the critical progressed a great deal further when I discovered Philosophy for Children. It also, when including PFC, gave me depth of experience that was spiritual. This came through putting together experience through English on the one side, and philosophical inquiry on the other. From this intensification came the beginnings of an understanding of how the public-objective and personal-subjective discourses come together in metaphor. Recently, I came across this wonderful definition of metaphor in a paper by Iris Yob (1995 p.1):
symbolic structures that give cognitive and affective access to domains of experience and knowledge which otherwise would remain enigmatic.
This wonderful definition helps link how objective and subjective forms of knowing can both be celebrated – resolving that which is apparently un –resolvable. However I would alter the definition in one respect. That is to say that the domains, at least on the side of subjective making of meaning, remain enigmatic, because they are intensely personal and never exhausted. To use the example I always use with children: Her eyes were shining diamonds presents two levels of meaning. The first is objective – we don’t mistake eyes for ears or vice versa. The second is subjective – and here the reverberations of meaning making are intensely personal, and virtually infinite in their possibilities. Consider just one possible point of difference and its implications on that side of the metaphor. Imagine I have had no contact with diamonds and that they hold no interest for me, and I see them as the toys of the despicable rich. Alternatively imagine communicating with someone who has loved diamonds all her life, and has traded in them and has constructed jewellery for various clients. The two people will reverberate in the meaning they make in wholly different ways.
The other major source for examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the objective and subjective truth positions is Lakoff and Johnson’s ‘classic’ text Metaphors We Live By (1980). Objective knowing and subjective knowing, and their coming together, is for them, via metaphor. The metaphor is the language in which the definite, objective, public meaning is yoked with infinite possible subjective, private meaning possibilities. This links to the ‘shoreline-mystery-island-of-knowledge’ metaphor, and to my personal myth Island, Shoreline, Ocean (see page 35, and beginning of Chapter 3). Metaphor is not only the language of spirituality, it also demonstrates how the objective and subjective, the public and the private can come together in an interchange.
English, via literature, my own writing and the joy of teaching children also gave me pathways to and from the ineffable. Such two-way paths within the strands of all three discourse-communities came, for me, into dynamic confluence in the late nineties – which enabled me to articulate the model here.
The criticality that I learned as the practical criticism of literature was greatly expanded, and placed in a philosophical context, when I saw the 1992 BBC television programme Socrates for Six Year Olds which started me on the path of becoming a teacher in, and of, PFC.
2:5 – Conceptual Gleanings from Philosophy For Children (PFC) and its Application To The Teaching Of English
Philosophy for Children – The Matthew Lipman model
Philosophy attempts to clarify and illuminate unsettled, controversial issues which are so generic that no scientific discipline is equipped to deal with them. Examples would be such concepts as truth, justice, beauty, personhood and goodness. At the same time ….. philosophy attempts to unsettle our minds with respect to those matters that we tend to take for granted, insisting that we pay attention to aspects which we have until now found it convenient to overlook.
The aim in Philosophy is to cultivate excellence in thinking.
Lipman M: (1986 p.3) Kio and Gus Teachers’ Manual
Next I present an introduction to Philosophy for Children, which I present as the exemplary programme for the ‘criticality’ part of my model.
Philosophy for Children is a programme developed by Professor Matthew Lipman (1991a, 1993), and colleagues, at Montclair State university during the 1980s. Lipman argued that for children to be reasoning and reasonable, as ‘graduates’ of an educational system, they had to be taught via a system that was itself reasoning and reasonable. To do this he wanted to make the philosophising process a major part of educational process. He knew that philosophy was taught as an elite subject to student elites, mainly at universities, and often in an historical way that taught ‘about’ the subject rather than teaching in it, and through it. His programme, then, is experiential in philosophising, and develops from an early age the capacity to think in the way that a philosopher thinks. It is directly in line with a tradition that includes Dewey, and starts with Socrates, and engages children in the search for meaning. It sees the class as a community of inquiry – that is a safe place to test out views, a place where students can take risks in their thinking, and build on the views of others, logically and via reason and reasonableness. The concern is listening, thinking, challenging and changing view-points, if so persuaded – a process that is the very basis of democracy. It is about exploring sets of ideas in a range of intellectual landscape, thereby clarifying concepts and values, and questioning and exploring problems encountered in the contexts of real life.
PFC:
1.is the reconstruction of the discipline of philosophy to make it accessible to pupils, students and teachers
2.is a series of dialogues
3.aims to lay foundations of reasoning, and reasonableness, for life
4.is about connecting thoughts and ideas with others
5.is about thinking in different ways and at different levels
6.is about looking at the middle ground – between hard facts (closed questions) and personal opinions, held with no justification
7.is about the providing of a safe place to try out new ideas
8.teaches respect: valuing the ideas of others while encouraging the search for reasons – for what they, or you, think, say or do
9.allows students to understand the resources of their own mind and therefore build self esteem
10. encourages students to discover ideas, construct ideas rather than absorb the ideas of others and give back the ideas of others
11. demonstrates the value of reasoned discussion for improving understanding and resolving conflict
12. encourages students to seek problems to try to resolve, through asking open ended questions
13. focuses on the value (and values) of dialogue
14. encourages students to think for themselves, and accept responsibility for their own views
15. teaches for cognitive proficiency: logic, high order thinking and critical thinking.10
Lipman and Sharp (1982) say that PFC is a holistic approach to teaching thinking skills, training judgement and facilitating comprehension. My experience is that children love to do philosophical inquiry (see video). My explanation is that all of the 4Cs represent activities that are ‘naturally’ human; philosophising, being one of them. Traditionally the view was that no one was fit to do philosophy below university level. The problem was seen as being the abstractness, and generally demanding nature, of philosophical language. Lipman’s brilliant solution was to use narrative (1981, 1991b) as the ‘bridge’ that gives children the means to discuss philosophically. An example is discussion about whether X or Y are inventions or discoveries (an example X would be the discovery of America and an example Y would be the invention of the video-recorder). Although this example is mainly a matter of exploring and clarifying concepts, and their application, there are many other skills being learned by the class using PFC – the following is a taxonomy of such skills (and/or dispositions):
* reading for meaning * understanding arguments
* problem seeking * detecting fallacies
* seeing what’s relevant * making connections
* sticking to the point * classifying
* giving reasons * formulating and using criteria
* making distinctions * seeing consequences
* seeing broader perspectives * using examples
* analyzing statements * exploring and analyzing concepts
* using analogies * seeing assumptions
* advancing counter arguments * developing hypotheses
* exploring alternatives * generalizing from particulars
* (active listening) * fair-mindedness/being just
* verbal-confidence and fluency * being reasonable
* sharing *seeing different perspectives