A Survey of Philosophical Thought in Children

Abstract

Introduction: In a number of recent discussions of non-standard, Philosophy programs vaarious ages have been identified as the focus for spontaneous or exceptional interest in philosophising. Such claims, supporting a particular population as naturally suited to philosophical inquiry, are based as often as not, on anecdotes that exhibit telling instances of philosophical activity. Needless to say, such motivated activity occurring spontaneously and outside of a formal classroom may occur in many contexts and at various ages. If professional educators egar to support philsophical programs on the basis of the naturalness of the philosophical enterprise are to warrant their interest on the basis of claims to age-appropriateness, some reasonable attempt at gathering empirical data is required. We offer the questionaire on the following pages as a probe to be used by interested educators and others.