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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

9-10y Age Group

RHEA KUTHOORE

Oct 10, 2021 · 7 min read

This class took place with the 5th grade children of Vidyodaya, Gudalur and has left a notable impression on me for several reasons — for the first time in my experiences of working with children did I hear such diverse ideas of God, I was confronted with new ways of reasoning and some of my fears regarding doing philosophy with children were put to rest. The children at school belong to different tribes from the Adivasi community. Most of them are the first generation to attend school. As most of their other classes were not conversational in texture, I had been worrying about the importance and possibility of verbal inquiry into ‘open’ questions. I had also braced myself in case I was to be met with silence. Since I had also been hearing about the worldviews of the Adivasi community from people around me, I wondered if I would find differences in perspectives amongst the children.

In our class, we were reading Ammachi’s Puchi, a story that invites us to think about our intuitive feelings, the ones that may feel very private and the ones that we find difficult to explain to others. As we spoke about what may happen after death (another theme in the story), we stumbled upon the question of god. Here, we paused to note down: Who or what or where is ‘God’? What image or idea comes to your mind when you think about God? What meaning does God have for you? The children were reassured that they can draw or write their responses, that there need not be only one answer to the question and that ‘everything,’ ‘nothing’ and ‘I do not know’ are valid responses as well.

Below, I have shared the children’s responses:

The activity involved noting down our responses on chits and keeping it secret. Each of us would then pick up a random chit from the lot (and place it back if it was our own chit) and think about: what do we feel about the response shared on the chit? How is it different from our own response? Do we agree or disagree with the new response? Did it affect our initial response in any way? Next, the person who had written that particular response will reveal themselves and share their own reasoning.

Responses:
The first child picked up the chit, ‘no god’. Her initial response was: ‘if there is no God, where did everything come from?’

To engage with her thinking, I told the class a little about how, although science does not have all the answers, it does attempt to answer such questions. I told them to consider the idea that the Universe was formed when a giant celestial body exploded. To this, the first child responded, ‘but what must have caused that body to explode?

’Essentially, she was asking, ‘who/what caused the first cause?’ Without trying to evoke any response, I let out a floating inquiry: ‘must there always be a cause for everything?’

After about five minutes, the same child decided to put forth another hypothesis. She said, ‘maybe the Universe was created and then God was created and then we were created.’ She let out a giggle along with, what I like to call, a floating thought.

The next child picked up the chit that had an elephant drawn on it. Many of the children agreed that the elephant was ‘God’ as they had seen it being worshiped. Here, I inquired: ‘is there something special about the elephant and are other animals not gods?’ Many of them began listing other animals too. One child shared, ‘Many gods have animals as their vehicles and so the vehicles must be godly too.’

So, we revisited our initial question, ‘what makes ‘God’ God? One child mentioned: ‘God helps us with our difficulties. For example, if I cannot study well, then I may pray to God to help me in my exam.’ I shared three different scenarios with the children. One was about a person who may lie and then ask God to forgive them. The second was about a person who may feel lazy before their exam and also pray to God to help them in the exam. The third was about a person who feels as though there is something external that controls their life and hence ends up feeling very helpless in many situations. Through these scenarios, we spoke about the implications of placing God, as a being with control, outside of ourselves.

The child who drew the house-looking structure is part of a tribe for whom the latter is the representation of God. He did not know how that specific structure came to be the representation of God and decided to find out more about it.

The children who had drawn stone, tree and sand were quick to think of all the ways in which they helped and protected them.

The child who wrote that God is the one who gave birth to us all said that his reason for thinking so is because ‘we all have little god in us.’

At some point, another child had a floating thought: ‘There are so many gods.’

The child who had drawn the snake had picked up the chit with a tree. When asked about her reason for agreeing with the other person’s answer, she said, ‘I have a different idea of god and he has another idea. Is that not reason enough to believe in another person’s idea of god?’ Her response was insightful because we usually assume that we ought to give sufficient reasons for different views. However, in this case, the child saw different ways of seeing as sufficient reason to agree with the other.

Finally, one child held that, ‘humans are god.’ She had three areas of exploration. First, she referenced Jesus Christ and how he was a human who was perceived to be God after his death. Second, she told us that it was her grandmother’s death anniversary and that they pray to their ancestors as they believe that our ancestors become Gods. Third, she said, ‘It is us humans who think so much about God and who have different ideas of God as well. Thus, it must be the case that humans are God.’ Her line of thinking fascinated me. She drew parallels between her personal experiences and another community’s experience of God and was also able to use both examples to further draw inferences about the nature of God.

When the children finally turned to me and asked me to express my own idea of God, I said, ‘I like to wonder about why humans wonder about God so much. I do not know who or what or where God may be but I resonate with our need to look to something beyond us. I believe it arises from how much of our lives may in fact be out of our control.’

Towards the end of the class, I spoke to the children about how our country is making life for Muslims increasingly difficult and about the recent Hijab ban.

Two classes after our discussion, one child came to class and said, ‘I continued to think about the question of God and I now think that it must be inside everyone of us because kadavul (god in Tamil) has vul (inside) embedded in the word itself.’ Our conversation in class didn’t just stay with her — she had come back after wondering about it some more.

As one may have noticed from all the details of the class, the idea is not to urge children to believe in or disbelieve in God. Rather, the purpose is to listen to all the different ways of perceiving God, to try and give reasons for our perspectives and to think about the implications of our views on others as well as on our own way of being in the world. Over time, engaging in philosophical thinking encourages children to think well, i.e they develop the ability to grasp inconsistencies in their own or others’ thinking as well as learn to see logical consequences of their beliefs.

Through this class, I had the joy of listening to unique perspectives, seeing children theorize based on their observations and understanding how they made connections and gave reasons. I further began wondering about what a contextual curriculum may unknowingly entail. In education, we often speak of the importance of keeping a child’s context in mind. We value context because we understand how learning takes place through observations, and from experiences in one’s immediate environment. Keeping context in mind has allowed me to pick stories that may help children make meaning of their experiences and to stay clear of a curriculum that perpetuates the creation of ‘uniform’ selves, who have similar and fixed knowledge about very specific aspects of the world. But, can contextualizing education create ‘uniform’ selves as well?

The role of the ‘other’ in education becomes relevant here. One understanding of the ‘other’ is from a sociological standpoint, i.e a community which has a different social, economic, cultural and political reality from one’s own. Through this lens, one’s reality is constantly molded by the ‘other’ community and power determines the relationship between us and them. Another understanding of the ‘other’ is one that is evoked by Levinas. For him, the ‘other is what I myself am not.’ Levinas suggests that teaching is about staging an encounter with the Other, with something outside the self, whereas learning is to receive from the Other more than the self already holds (Todd 29).The Other signifies a limitless possibility for the self, and it is by coming face to face with such limitlessness that the self can exceed its own containment, its own self-identity, breaking the solitude of being for the self. In this view, teaching is only possible if the self is open to the Other, to the face of the Other. Through such openness to what is exterior to the I, the I can become something different than, or beyond, what it was; in short, it can learn (Todd 30). I believe that learning through stories, wherein characters embody radically different experiences of being in the world, helps to expand our sense of I and ‘learn’, as understood by Todd.

I have been wondering if for communities such as the Adivasis, wherein various forms of oppression are a continuous lived reality, the sociological sense of the ‘other’ overshadows Levinas’ sense of the ‘other’ by virtue of requiring a strong group identity. If such is the case, however, what would be an educator’s responsibility towards children who do indeed have unique, plural and expanding selves? In what ways can a contextual curriculum be considerate of the sociologically determined self without denying how the ‘I’ has limitless possibilities?

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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