Philosophy of education - Wisdom from preschool:
Why wait for the end of high school to sharpen your mind? Philosophy, very often mistaken with history of human thought, is a subject that helps face the complexity of some questions and allow to work on your critical and analytical mind. Philosophy is significant in all of our schools.
Children are curious because they see the world as a completely new discovery. They need guidance to familiarise with concepts such as beauty, truth, freedom, desire, friendship…and so on.
By allowing them to discuss a story every week, children learn to listen, sharpen their judgement, accept the complexity as much as difference.
Marie Robert, the founder of the school, a philosophy graduate at the Sorbonne, writer of When you Kant figure it out and the 3 other books present philosophy workshops each week at the school. The aim is to answer children metaphysical questions. How it works :
« I sit in a circle with children and remind them the rules. A few breathes and ritual gestures « We are going to enter in philosophy », before starting to tell the story. Either made up for the class or from the collection Les goûters de philo.
Using fiction allow immersion. Children are familiarised with characters, in order to identify…and so on. I take a break during the story like a first step and I ask the following questions :
What did they remember?
What struck them?
Would’ve they did the same thing ?
What this specific word mean ?
I ask questions to open and guide the debate. By talking, children can start their thinking process. Then I go on with the story that gets more complex and mention something new, not mentioned yet.
After the story, I ask more questions and what is wonderful about this moment is that I could almost disappear. Children discuss, present their arguments…They think! They face complexity! Sometimes I continue the story and ask children to come up with a conclusion, not a truth but something they retain.
Maria Montessori said “Let's not raise our children for today's world. This world will not exist when they grow up; and nothing allows us to know which world will be theirs: so let them learn to adapt.” We are convinced that one of children most essential ability is to learn to children is to learn how to thing and to question. To go further here are two bibliographies in french :
She also suggests several zoom conferences for parents of the school during the year (sleep, autonomy, nutrition…). Those conferences are part of the very particular approach we suggest to the parents of our schools.
A video :
