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How do we come
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Investigating the ways we come to know through picture books

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Philosophy with Children Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

RHEA KUTHOORE

Sept 05, 2023 · 6 min read

_{This curriculum on ‘how do we come to know?’ was carried out by Jigar and me for Selenghat Valley school, in Assam. The students of the school are predominantly first generation school goers and children of the tea estate workers of the region. Although their first languages included Bihari, Bengali, Assamese, and Saura, we facilitated in Hindi (their second language at school). For this reason, we translated all our resources into Hindi. In all our classes, the teachers were also present and there was a maximum of 15 students per class.
Very briefly, Selenghat Valley is on a path to discover and redefine ‘holistic’ education for the children of the tea estate workers, who are otherwise pushed out of mainstream schools.
As the teachers are keen on emphasising inquiry, dialogue and thinking skills in their classrooms, we had the chance to explore philosophy with children in our sessions.
Given our limited time, we did not get a chance to explore the question of ‘what is philosophy’ with the children and hear out all their philosophical questions. For this reason, I developed the idea of a ‘pre-stimuli.’ Through this process, we, as facilitators, asked questions that were relevant to the children’s experiences and drew out potential philosophical questions from there.}

Goal and method of curriculum development

It is now established that we inquire and explore to be able to discover truths and create knowledge. To be able to know from our sensibilities to inquire, we must begin by learning about the different ways we come to know about ourselves and the world. Moreover, we must also explore the criterion for truth and knowledge. The following lesson plans are aimed at using stories to engage participants in these two explorations while they also gain the ability to see the challenges, assumptions and uncertainties in the process of knowing.

The overarching themes emerged when Jigar and I thought through ways in which we do come to know. We were interested in exploring the role of our senses in knowing, how other species come to know, the influence of memories, biases, language, dreams, silence, art, intuitions and feelings on knowing. We were also keen on understanding the difference between belief and knowledge and what constitutes reliable knowledge.

We did not have the chance to develop lesson plans to explore all of the themes mentioned. However, we also came across interesting picture books that let us explore — how do we come to know of the past? How do we know about what happens after death? How do we know about God? And what do know from testimonal knowledge?

We selected the books by researching within several resources. We included — Prindle Institute and PLATO websites. We drew from ‘picture books, pedagogy and philosophy’ by Karen Murris. We spoke with book stores and libraries in India. Kahani tree in Mumbai was very useful. Finally, (and the controversial?) chat GPT was also helpful in looking for relevant work within these themes.

Our choice of theme, recourse and facilitation was also influenced by feminist and indigenous epistemologies. Specifically, when deciding themes and resources, we thought about — whose perspective/voice is this and whose are missing? What is considered ‘reasonable’ when it comes to knowing and why? What are some binaries in our thinking and where does it arise from? whose experiences have contributed to the process of knowing? Further, In many Indigenous epistemologies, there is a recognition of presentational knowledge (humans are gripped by knowledge) as compared to representational knowledge (humans come to have knowledge by grasping objects in the world).

More generally, we are also keen on developing curriculum that is embedded in eco-pedagogies (i.e how would knowledge of other species inform the question we are thinking about), decolonial pedagogies (i.e which forms of thinking and being have been undermined because of colonialism and how can pay attention to them in our inquiries) and disability studies (i.e how have relationships of production altered our thinking about bodies and the norm and how can rethinking the same through our content).

Design of each lesson plan

Each lesson plan begins with a pre-stimuli. The aim of the pre-stimuli is for the facilitator to ask the kinds of questions that draw on the students’ knowledge and experience and from which emerges a potential philosophical question/open-ended dilemma/contestable belief. The benefits of the pre-stimuli are —
1. The questions worth inquiring into are not decided by the facilitator but arise out of relevant questions pertaining to children's experiences,
2. By sharing their knowledge and experience, the children find meaning/relevance in the activity/reading to follow,
3. For the children who are not yet familiar with the practice of reflecting on their experiences to pose open-ended questions, such scaffolding is helpful, and
4. Oftentimes, hearing different experiences/perspectives gives rise to reflective and philosophical thinking. For example, we only realize that it is possible to question ‘a girl is a girl’ when we hear a story wherein a person identified as a girl feels like a boy. Hence, it is important for people to hear/see a perspective before they arrive at questioning and challenging their own perspectives.

The purpose of the stimuli/resource is for students to develop their perspectives on an open-ended question, evaluate their reasons, and consider other possibilities. For this, I believe that well-selected stimuli/resources involve the following attributes — characters who exhibit different ways of testing any hypothesis, dialogues on contestable questions and reflecting critically and imaginatively, a playful exploration of a philosophical concept, and characters being challenged due to new knowledges they gain through experience and exploration. According to Matthews, 'philosophical whimsy' involves unusual characters (e.g., flying babies), extreme concepts (e.g, immortality), and thought experiments (e.g., wearing a ring that makes you invisible) and other features that unsettle and disturb (Gregory 43). Moreover, he also identifies how philosophical thinking is set up when there is a dialectic between the familiar and the strange and hence, fantasy, in particular, is helpful to PwC.

To allow children to develop their perspectives, the facilitator must be equipped with the kinds of moves that promote the same. Here, I mention the thinking moves that must be involved in lesson plans, through the facilitator’s interaction and even in pedagogies. There are many kinds of questions that allow us to develop our philosophical abilities as well. I will speak more about these in another post. I provide evidence of the kinds of questions and thinking skills in my lesson plans.

Creative & critical thinking skills

· Asking a question and wondering
· Agreeing disagreeing
· Giving a reason
· Giving an example of counterexample
· Classifying/categorizing
· Offering a proposition, hypothesis, or explanation
· Making a comparison
· Making a distinction
· Making an analogy
· Offering a definition
· Identifying an assumption
· Making an inference
· Making a conditional statement
· Self-correcting
· Restating
· Entertaining different perspective
· Drawing implications
· Giving thought experiments
· Remembering and recollecting
· Listening
· Revealing what is missing or biases
· Collaborating
· Making observations

Finally, in each of these lesson plans, I also try to embed an in-class learning outcome (besides those that are a part of doing Pwc) that involves sharing with children new information that furthers their critical and creative thinking about any subject. For instance, it could be about the structure of the eyes of other species, the history of language development, or recent research on memories and dreams.

Clickable Lessons

They all saw a cat

Du Iz tak?

The Brief Thief

Gone grandmother

God’s little ant

Head, Body, Legs

Frog in Love

An Extraordinary Egg

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

Thinking Rhizomatically

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