The beneficial effects of philosophy on children
Philosophy is one of the disciplines hardest hit by the boom in Productivist mentality : what does not produce added value clearly and manifestly is despised and is relegated to the trunk of confusing elements without utility.
Is degradation of the value of philosophy It has been seen very clearly in the university environment, but in compulsory education the perspectives are not particularly favorable.
Philosophy and children
Why invest time and money in promoting a line of knowledge and competition that will be truncated when the time of the labor market arrives?
To these sociological arguments we must add the psychological ones. It is a widespread idea that many students do not have to benefit from philosophy, since developmental psychology shows the difficulty (or inability) of younger children to cope with abstract ideas .
See in this regard the theory of the stages of development of Jean Piaget. Of course, studies on the development of brain connectivity (necessary to create abstractions, which are properties shared by the most varied objects) indicate that this does not fully consolidate until the third decade of life. Is education in critical thinking unnecessary for the youngest?
Beyond the contents, praxis
Recent research suggests that teaching children philosophy can produce a significant improvement in their level of intelligence . The study, carried out by Spanish researchers (Roberto Colom, Félix García Moriyón, Carmen Magro, Elena Morilla) and whose results have been published in Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, is a longitudinal research that has been followed for 10 years, from 6 years until the completion of secondary school, a group that was taught weekly philosophy classes (455 boys and girls) and a group control to which these classes were not taught (321 boys and girls). Both the control group and the treatment group had the same socioeconomic profile and both belonged to the students of private schools in the Madrid area.
The results show that the members of the treatment group they increased their CI by 7 points (general cognitive ability) and 4 and 7 points in fluid and crystallized intelligence, respectively. In addition, philosophy classes with children reduced the accumulation over the years of the number of students in the "risk zone" (with a relatively low IQ score), typical problem of educational institutions.
Regarding the influence of these sessions on personality traits, philosophy students from an early age showed a tendency to extraversion, honesty and emotion . These features could be enhanced, rather than by the content of the classes, by the teaching modality required by philosophy to be taught in classes: the discussion groups, the debate to question preconceived ideas and the continuous proposal of questions. The philosophy with children requires a much more democratic class structure in which the student is an active subject together with the rest of the classmates and the teacher becomes a facilitator and guide of the students' research (something that connects very well with the theory of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development).
A new paradigm
If we recapitulate, we will see that the particularity of philosophy is not so much the content of these studies , understood as an "information package" that is transmitted unilaterally by the teacher to the students, but the role of this discipline as an appropriate framework to formulate questions and propose answers, that is, to elaborate a proper way of seeing the world. This dynamic of questioning things does not have to be limited to topics that can not be covered by the mind of the child, just as sport is important in all people, regardless of their ability to gain muscle mass.
Philosophy can constitute in itself a healthy habit and a training for the transcendental issues that will come in later stages of development, as well as offering a space in which work the management of intersubjectivity and understanding with others .
