P4C and Playfulness: Are Games and Playfulness Important for Communities of Philosophical Inquiry?

Abstract

Introduction: In the summer of 2011—the third year in which Eurekamp² provided programming—I sat in the shade of one of the rare maple trees on the University of Alberta campus, casually eating my lunch while 2 of the 40 or so children played in the dirt beside me. It was a Wednesday of our third week that year—at the time Eurekamp offered four weeks of camps for children in the grades 1 through 9; we welcomed nearly 150 children that year—and so the children had already had a few days to acclimate to one-another socially, to be encouraged to ask questions about a range of activities, and to really listen to what other children were saying. The two—one boy, one girl—were both 6 years old (our youngest participants) and were pensively pushing sticks into the dirt.