By Griffin Werner
In Democracy and Education, John Dewey (1916) stated, “if we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education” (p. 328). If this is true, in what ways can educators apply philosophy as a general theory of education to facilitate a classroom experience wherein education is more than just imparting knowledge and getting through the material? As a philosopher, this is a question I love to think about when working with teachers who are interested in doing philosophy with children. Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a worldwide movement and a progressive education pedagogy which aims to facilitate the creation of communities who think together philosophically about issues that matter to them. But what exactly do we mean by philosophy, when doing philosophy with children?
For many of the teachers that I work with, this is an important question and it usually comes up at the end of a P4C session when teachers want to know how the session went. They often ask me, how were the students’ wonderings in that session? Was the discussion “philosophical enough?” The teachers seem to be wondering what makes a “philosophical question” and what makes a subsequent conversation deep enough to constitute a “philosophical conversation”. These questions rest on an assumption about the nature of philosophy, namely, that philosophy must be “something more” than a genuine wondering that comes from a student or a robust conversation that erupts due to a wondering, wherever it leads. Through a distinction used in philosophy for children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) literature, namely the distinction between Big P Philosophy and little p philosophy, I would like to address this assumption and work to build the confidence of educators who are concerned about how philosophical they themselves and their students are becoming as they do philosophy together.
Big P and little p philosophy
The short answer to the question of whether students’ questions or discussions are philosophical enough is that, yes, they are. Without having to consider a particular example, I know the question is philosophical enough as long as it comes from a genuine place of wonder. Philosophy does not have to be considered the end goal of doing p4cHI. Doing p4cHI at all is doing philosophy. So, however you as an educator are genuinely aiming to create a space in your classroom where students can participate openly and share their wonderings and thoughts in an intellectually safe environment, philosophy is happening. No matter how well you are doing it, you are doing it and it is happening, therefore, philosophy is happening, and it is enough.
I suspect, however, that this short answer isn’t satisfactory. “Okay, fine,” you say, “but how do I know that the students are progressing and becoming more philosophical if I don’t know what philosophy is?” As a philosopher in training myself, this kind of question is all but familiar due to any length of study of Plato’s Dialogues. If we are talking about something or using a word in conversation or claim that we do it, we must be able to succinctly articulate what that thing is, right?
My view, however, is that the question of whether one must know what it means to be philosophical in order to determine whether philosophy is happening or progressing in the classroom already implies that one has a sense of what philosophy is. The question itself is profoundly philosophical. Besides the fact that it is a genuine wondering coming from a place of curiosity and a genuine desire to learn and understand, it also asks a profoundly epistemological question, namely, a question regarding what it means “to know”.
Now, there is an important distinction I just made, which I think is at the heart of questions concerned with the philosophical “enoughness” of students and p4cHI dialogues. The distinction can be cashed out in terms of what’s called Big P and little p philosophy (Jackson, 2013, p. 108-109). Little p philosophy is related to the point about genuinely wondering and coming from a place of curiosity and a desire to learn and understand. Big P Philosophy is related to that ten-dollar word I used, epistemology, the study of what it means to know.
This distinction is a helpful way of addressing the insecurity that comes with doing something called “philosophy” in p4cHI but not having the training in philosophy that one knows is typically only done at colleges and universities. Ultimately, the claim that p4cHI wants to make is that all philosophy, Big P and little p, is rooted in little p philosophy. And, I would claim, any self-respecting Big P Philosopher in the Academy would agree that all the major treatises of Big P Philosophy came foundationally from a place of genuine curiosity and desire to understand. All the books, and theories, and ten-dollar words, and programs, and journals, and conferences, and concepts, are all fundamentally rooted in human beings who had genuine wonderings that came from places of curiosity and a genuine desire to learn and understand themselves and the world around them.
When Big P Philosophers started wondering about what they eventually wrote hundreds of pages about, they were doing philosophy. When they were writing, they were also doing philosophy, and when one reads the books of the Big P Philosophers, one is also doing philosophy. However, philosophy does not occur in the book. The book is not the philosophy. Philosophy happens when one genuinely engages with a question from a place of curiosity and aims to learn and understand. More often than not, I read Big P Philosophers from a place of curiosity, but that does not mean I understand. Am I not a philosopher because I don’t understand someone’s philosophy? No, I am a philosopher insofar as I am genuinely questioning and wondering about something, and I am doing it with another, whether that is with another person face to face, in community, or with the author of a text through their written words.
The reader is thinking with the writer, having a conversation in order to come to some kind of understanding. In the same way, in a p4cHI circle, when students come together to think philosophically, by genuinely wondering, and that coming from a place of curiosity and a desire to understand, they are doing so in community. Despite your concerns about what makes a p4c session philosophical (what makes it philosophical enough to make it somehow “like” what’s written down in the Big P Philosopher’s books) philosophy is happening in your classroom when you create an environment for your students that is safe enough for them to feel comfortable genuinely wondering.
Still, some of you might be asking, “But how do I get them to be better thinkers? Sure, they are doing philosophy. Fine. But some days are better than others when it comes to their genuine interest and desire to engage. How do I get them to progress, and how do I know they are progressing?” This is a difficult question to address because it implies that progress is linear or that p4cHI involves some “plan” that leads students through a particular curriculum such that at the end they “know” something in particular.
Despite this, one way to make sure you are cultivating the “philosophical thinking skills” necessary to “talk like” and “think like” a philosopher is to use the good thinker’s tool kit through lessons and games, and to encourage your students to use it during and outside p4cHI sessions (Jackson, p. 104-106). This will give your students the set of tools necessary to articulate themselves better and build on the foundation of safety instilled in the classroom. Nevertheless, the foundation of philosophy does not come from Big P Philosophers’ ideas or concepts, nor does it come from a set of skills one acquires. Philosophy, the ability to wonder and genuinely question, as well as the desire to understand, are things we are all born with, and this connects all of us and makes us human. In p4cHI, we call this primal wonder or beginner’s mind, and it is the foundation not only of the philosophy of p4cHI and the p of p4cHI, but it is also the foundation of what makes human beings what they are. We wonder. It’s simply what we do.
Primal Wonder and the Beginner’s Mind
Now, you might be thinking, “Is it true that everyone wonders? I for one, have met people that I don’t think wonder very much. Is it true that everyone is really a philosopher at heart?” I would say that it’s true that not everyone wonders to the same extent. What’s important is that we are foundationally wondering beings because wonder is something that we all have the capacity to do. While wonder is something we do when we genuinely engage with things or questions with a desire to understand, that wondering is rooted in what Thomas Jackson (2001), founder of p4cHI, calls primal wonder, a kind of wondering that is at the foundation of all thinking because it exists prior to our particular experience in a culture that we make sense of through a particular language.
The concept of primal wonder can be explained through the Zen Buddhist concept of beginner’s mind. In the western tradition, the word philosophy comes from the Greek word philo meaning ‘love of’ and sophie meaning ‘wisdom.’ Philo-sophie literally means love of wisdom. So, any conversation that you might say is driven toward better understanding, clarity of thought, or deeper self-understanding, is especially philosophical, whether or not you are using philosophy jargon or ten-dollar words. And if you were to record the conversation, you’d probably find some good-thinker’s toolkit letters in use, not because the people in the conversation were trying to be philosophical but because it is natural for us to question things and probe deeper when we are seeking better understanding and clarity of thought.
In the Asian traditions of philosophy, by contrast, the word philosophy does not exist, but that does not mean people in those traditions did not wonder and did not question deeply. They did indeed, and one of the concepts that has come from the Japanese tradition of Zen Buddhism, which has its roots in Chinese Chan Buddhism, Daoism, and Indian Buddhism, is the concept of beginner’s mind.
The characters for beginner’s mind, shoshin (初心), literally mean ‘begin’ and ‘heart/mind,’ respectively. In Japanese, there is not much of a hard distinction between logical thinking and emotional thinking which is why the character for “mind” and the character for “heart”—where we in Anglo-European languages typically place the seat of emotions as opposed to the head, which is the seat of logical thinking—is the same.
The concept of the beginner’s mind in Zen Buddhism refers to an attitude of openness and eagerness, along with a lack of preconceptions toward new things one experiences. Like any beginner of some activity, having a beginner’s mind means one’s mind is empty, ready to be filled with new knowledge and experiences. When one’s mind is full, approaching a new subject or activity can be very difficult because we can’t help projecting old knowledge from different activities onto the new one in a way that clearly does not fit. If, for instance, you are born in a country with a historically Christian religious foundation, like in the United States, you might be taken aback when encountering a Buddhist who might have a different way of putting the world together. Beginner’s mind is also easily explained through habits of the body. If we are used to playing a particular sport, like basketball, our body might be used to putting itself in particular positions, putting a particular kind of strain on particular parts of the body when playing basketball. But when we switch to soccer, the way of using the body is different, and we have to adjust by “forgetting” everything we know about playing sports, and relearning with a beginner’s mind how to effectivity play the new one.
In Zen Buddhism, the concept is primarily used to illustrate the insights of Zen Buddhism and how to understand them through meditative practice. Zen Buddhist meditation is all about attempting to clear the heart/mind, to return to a time/place, like when we are children, where we look at everything with wonder and curiosity (Davis, 2022, 3). If one approaches meditation with a particular goal in mind, with an object to achieve through one’s practice, such an object will ultimately obstruct one’s ability to achieve their goal, because there is no goal to Zen practice. One comes to the meditation cushion with all kinds of thoughts racing in one’s head, and the idea is to come off the cushion with less. Sitting zazen helps one cultivate their beginner’s mind in the sense of getting back to where it was when they were children. One sits and is able to clear all the preconceptions that they have, not only about the world and how it makes sense or doesn’t make sense, but also about the self and what the self ultimately is.
Like I said, the concept of beginner’s mind comes from the Zen Buddhist tradition, but it was especially popularized by a 20th century Zen Buddhist who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, Shunryū Suzuki. Suzuki takes the concept from Dōgen, the founder of the Sōtō-Zen sect of Zen Buddhism in Japan, from the 13th century, and updates it with respect to the development of his ideas at his Zen center in California.
For Suzuki (1970), the goal of the practice of Zen meditation, zazen, is to keep one’s beginner’s mind. When we become accustomed to certain ways of thinking and acting, we lose our beginner’s mind. Even in Zen, we might come to the meditation cushion and think, yes, I have figured this meditation thing out. But that is a misstep. Zen is about always being a beginner, not about understanding what Zen is about from the sutras or attaining enlightenment. Zen and Zen practice is about maintaining one’s beginner’s mind even while one deepens their Zen practice and becomes a “master”. Paradoxically, the true master of Zen is the true beginner (p. 1-3).
However, the question is, how does that relate to p4cHI? What is the beginner’s mind if it is not primal wonder? Cultivating one’s primal wonder is the consequence of engaging in little p philosophy through p4c. It is the activity of considering different ways of understanding the world and coming to realize that, while we might have preconceptions that are different from others’, all those preconceptions are grounded in primal wonder, a fundamental orientation toward the world that is curious and desirous to understand. If there is a difference between the two, primal wonder is what we are born with, it is the bedrock through which we wonder and are curious about the world and ourselves. The beginner’s mind is an orientation toward primal wonder, it is what we aim to cultivate by engaging in p4cHI and meditative practices. While primal wonder is something we may not ever be able to get back to because we will never be babies again, it still serves as the foundation of our natural ability to wonder and think philosophically. In our ability to think philosophically, we inevitably strip away our preconceptions and cultivate our beginner’s mind.
“Okay, okay” you might be saying. “You started out saying you were just going to answer my question, and not give me a bunch of philosophical jargon like “primal wonder” and “beginner’s mind”. You even gave me a bit of a Japanese history lesson! After all that, I still don’t really get it. I teach 1st grade, and when we do p4c, my students aren’t being curious or have a genuine desire to understand. They are just trying to have fun and they barely listen to each other or me. They can’t be philosophers too, can they?”
Aren’t they though? The road to wisdom is a long one, one that is arguably never complete. Wisdom isn’t about knowledge or about one’s ability to articulate things. Wisdom is about knowing what to do and how to act in such a way that makes life meaningful. When a first grader looks up at you with trust, with an absolute feeling of safety in the space, and instead of following along with the conversation says something completely different about what they think they saw earlier or something else random, who are we adults to say that that isn’t philosophy? That child is unincumbered by all the social pressures we adults and older kids are under to act in the ways we think we are supposed to. If anything, that 1st grade child is the wisest in the room, because they are being authentically who they are, living their life full of meaning without being caught up by arbitrary rules that condition the way they think.
If you’ve ever seen a mature community of inquiry (or a group of Zen monks) you’ll notice that it ends up looking like a group of first graders who can’t support their own bodies and their own laughter as they discuss deep and personal issues as if it was nothing. The idea is to get back to the sense of primal wonder that we have at birth by cultivating a beginner’s mind, something that the 1st grader, “the beginner”, already has. We can do this by “philosophizing”, by using the toolkit, by having inquiries, by teaching lessons, and even by sitting zazen. Primal wonder and the road to beginner’s mind is not a linear path, and it is not a path to anywhere in particular. It is simply an opening, an opening that p4cHI aims to keep open the best it can. And in that sense, p4cHI facilitators and teachers are not the masters and arbiters of knowledge. They are just as much interested in cultivating their beginner’s mind, which entails opening oneself up to seeing one’s students as not only capable of being philosophers but also as simply other people who are also capable of helping their teacher cultivate their beginner’s mind as well. The children have the answers, and they will tell you. All you have to do is create the space for them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Griffin Werner is a graduate student in the Philosophy Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa working on his dissertation project on the politics of nihilism. The project engages the question of how we ought to attend to each other in our contemporary world, a world that seems to be bent on its own destruction. Part of the answer to that question involves how we approach education and how philosophy can be used as a tool to help children think differently and deeply about themselves, each other, and the world around them. As a Graduate Assistant with the Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education, Griffin also works as a Philosopher in Residence at Elementary and High Schools on Oahu, supporting teachers engaged in philosophy for children (p4c) pedagogy with their students. You'll find Griffin at The Curb in Kaimuki reading or at home playing with his dog Bagel.
