Motivational Aspects of Philosophy for Children

Abstract

Introduction:  The teaching of reasoning skills to elementary school children was conceived until recently as an impossible undertaking.  Reasoning has been generally understood as a higher level accomplishment, and therefore, the idea of teaching reasoning to elementary school children was not taken seriously.  But reasoning does not consist only of higher level skills.  There are logical skills, elementary primary skills that "for the most part are the basic logical apparatus of human beings of all ages and of virtually all creatures" (Lipman, 1984).