By Royce Bowman
philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) is a progressive approach to education that aims to transform the schooling experience by engaging people in the activity of philosophy. p4cHI aids students and teachers in converting traditional classrooms into intellectually safe communities of inquiry. Together, they develop their ability to think for themselves in responsible ways by exploring “big questions” that arise from their interests, experiences, and learning contexts. The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education is the home of philosophy for children Hawai‘i.
This past summer, UHM Children’s Center preschool teacher, Royce Bowman learned more about p4cHI as a part of his coursework in the UHM Progressive Philosophy and Pedagogy Masters program. Excited to put the progressive pedagogy into practice, Royce experimented with p4cHI in his early childhood classroom. His reflections on the experience are captured in this poem:
A newborn’s mind, fresh and unobstructed
Eager to learn about what we’ve constructed
Wide eyes drink in all they may
Clumsy fingers grab and play
Ears and nose connect invisible strings
Mouths try to taste too many things
SO much stimuli and yet he wants more
More of this world for him to explore
Now at fifteen he sits here jaded
His learning objectives obfuscated
No longer explores of his own volition
He regurgitates the latest edition
Of textbook knowledge, written fact
A politician’s decided track
No need to find out for himself
All he needs is on the shelf
What’s happened in those formative years
Once fraught with joy now only tears
Come as he thinks of education
To what he learns, has no relation
Can we reverse the clock in turn
And capture again his zeal to learn?
Can we begin cognitive healing
And inject in learning a deeper meaning?
Where to begin, well maybe we start
By approaching thinking as an art
We introduce Philosophy
But with a lowercase “little” p
For children innately philosophize
And see the world with curious eyes
How can we nurture curiosity?
We can start by using p4c
What’s that you ask? It’s a notion
To explore thoughts and process emotions
It’s thinking about what’s ‘tween your ears
And learning from and with your peers
It’s personally relevant, collaborative
It’s intentional and reflective
To your thoughts, it holds a mirror
And makes hidden assumptions clearer
It helps your brain to think with care
And amplifies what’s already there
That all sounds great, where do we start??
By making our space safe for brain and heart
We work together, a community
To ensure safety, intellectually
We make commitments to support our friends
And recognize value even in disagreements
A safe space where all are free to ponder
Any thought that occurs from out yonder
Each child, be they quiet or loud
Are given a chance, among the crowd
To pontificate on thoughts collected,
And to be heard, embraced, respected
Next, to ensure fairness for all
We collaborate on the community ball
A ball on which making we all pitch in
A thought, a fun fact, some yarn we spin
We empower the ball to display the speaker
And be they loud or be they meeker
All have an equal chance to be heard
Then choose who next will have a word
Though each may pass it along in a blink
If they desire more time to think
And so this ball creates a safe space
For children to think at their own pace
Up next we have an important tool kit
With which we open our minds a bit
Not tools for wood or metal or brawn
But to unlock thoughts and look beyond
We use these tools to hone our gumption
And look behind each bold assumption
It questions that which we take for granted
And identify how those seeds were planted
We use examples to build a theory
Or counterexamples when claims seem leery
“What” questions produce clarification
And thus thought is allowed further germination
It allows us to pry open those reasons why
To help nail down the logic applied
Alas we come to the main event
Where theory meets practice with great intent
All that we’ve done, our thought enhancing
We begin intellectually breakdancing
Out to sea we start our Plain Vanilla
And drift around on our thought flotilla
With no direction set in stone
Our personal thoughts guide us alone
With seemingly endless changes of course
We make great progress from our source
More questions arise, more than we started!
We venture into waters uncharted
Often times we reach not our goal
Yet land upon more interesting shoals
For the answer lies not in the end
‘Tis the process through which our thinking transcends
And using this process we can apply,
To any subject under the sky,
The children now have personal stake
Passion replaces scholarly headaches
They bring to school thoughts made at home
They no longer feel so darn alone
Empowered, they ask burning questions
Safe, they fear not self-expression
Supported, they pontificate as one
Trusted, their healing has begun
Together, part of a community
No competition, but unity
No longer trapped by “banking” teachers
We all become independent creatures
For with p4c we learn from everyone
Teachers and students together as one
So what does this mean for our troubled young lad,
Who had once thought of school as inherently bad?
His natural curiosity starts to emerge
His school work and interests start to converge
Education now means more than spouting off facts
His confidence soars, curiosity intact
Knowledge means more than what someone else said
He feels validation for what’s in his head
A philosophizer, his thoughts now have roots
He handily tackles academic pursuits
A critical thinker, confident, kind
Society improves through this type of mind
For it starts at the bottom and spreads to above
This educational approach that is centered around love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Royce Bowman is a preschool teacher at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Children’s Center. He is also enrolled in the inaugural cohort for the Progressive Philosophy and Pedagogy Masters program at UH and is excited about opening his mind to the possibilities of how to make learning more intentional, collaborative, creative, personally relevant, and reflective. Royce was born and raised in Hawaii and attended Punahou high school and the University of Hawaii for his undergraduate degree. He has been a teacher at UHMCC for over eight years and worked in early education related fields for the majority of his life.
