Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis

Editor's Welcome

Jason J. Howard — 2023-12-08

Introduction: This second issue of AT&PP (Vol. 43) includes a range of articles, six in total, responding to a Call for Papers on the Politization of Education. The result is a rich array of perspectives, some centered in Philosophy for Children while others explore the larger political landscape of contemporary education and the challenge of teaching in such ideologically volatile environments. These articles are followed by three book reviews that look at timely contributions to issues of education and culture.

U.S. Americanization in Puerto Rico’s Public Schools: Proposing Children’s Self-Organization for Decoloniality Through Photovoice and Philosophy for/with Children

Erick J. Padilla Rosas — 2023-12-08

The literature on U.S. Americanization in Puerto Rico's public schools suggests that de jure U.S. Americanization culminated in 1949 when an administrative order made Spanish the official language of instruction. However, the same literature seems to indicate that students continue to experience the impacts of U.S. Americanization because there has been limited systematic political intentionality to decolonize the educational system. In this article, I argue that to carry out a decolonizing process in the public schools of the archipelago, it will be necessary to engage in critical dialogues with students, listen to how they view their colonial reality, and push their thoughts to new spaces. To do this, I propose that educators use the photovoice methodology with children to see how they see and read their world. In addition, educators should practice philosophy for and with children (P4wC) so that children use the images they take as stimuli for communities of inquiry. In conclusion, I will demonstrate that the combination of photovoice and P4wC can be conducive to critically listen and attend to the voice and the gaze of children and begin to develop educational tools that allow children to critically respond on their own to the demands of their social and political context. In this way, the Americanization of Puerto Rico's public schools could be addressed by children's voices, visions, philosophies, and will for social change.

Why (and How) Schools Should Engage in Political Education

Pierre-Étienne Vandamme — 2023-12-08

Introduction: Political education is a loaded expression, and even more so when it is suggested that state authorities should be in charge of it. To many people, it will evoke indoctrination or even re-education camps. It is true that authoritarian states wanting to secure the obedience of their citizens have a strong incentive to shape their political beliefs, and this is often what political education organized by public authorities has looked like in the past and may look like nowadays. This grounds a legitimate concern towards any form of politicization or partisan instrumentalization of the educational system. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that a form of publicly organized political education is also necessary in democratic contexts—and to understand what kind of political education is required.

Navigating Controversial Classroom Discussions

Mark Anthony Conlon — 2023-12-08

Conversations about controversial political issues within the public-school classroom are necessary for the whole development of students as they prepare to participate fully in democracy, part of their role as conscious social reproducers of the American political regime. Effective educators train students to critically understand and analyze political conflicts pluralistically through contemporary and historical lenses. However, teachers are caught amid a conflict within the public discourse about the appropriateness of engaging in political and controversial classroom discussions. As a result, state legislatures and local school districts are defining their stances on such issues, sometimes leading to barriers in the path of educators having productive political discussions within their classrooms. This paper provides a rationale for engaging in political conversations within U.S. classrooms by understanding the legal structure and how to use state standards to examine such issues philosophically. Finally, this article provides several perspectives and methods teachers can use to have productive political dialogue within their classrooms aligned to the identified legal structure.

Keywords: Democratic education; Political Philosophy, Controversial topics, Exploratory dialogue

A Contractualist Approach to Political Education

Kenneth R. Pike — 2023-12-08

Politically neutral pedagogy is often the subject of both praise and condemnation. But treating political neutrality as a principle to be either embraced or rejected confuses the issue, because the permissibility of neutrality actually varies across educational contexts. Educational practice should not be evaluated on the basis of whether or not it is politically neutral, but in terms of the specific burdens it places on individual interests. Contractualism, as an account of moral permissibility, is well-suited to the task of identifying when, and why, educators may permissibly aspire to politically neutral pedagogy. In particular, it identifies judicious adherence to political neutrality as a practical classroom approach to preventing legislative interference with permissible non-neutrality.

Philosophical Dialogue and the Civic Virtues: Modeling Democracy in the Classroom

Zachary Odermatt — 2023-12-08

Political polarization is on the rise, undermining the shared space of public reason necessary for a thriving democracy and making voters more willing than ever to dismiss the perspectives of their political opponents. This destructive tendency is especially problematic when it comes to issues of race and gender, as informed views on these topics necessarily require engaging with those whose experiences may differ from our own. In order to help our students combat further polarization, we created a course on “The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender” that incorporated intergroup dialogues—small, diverse, semester-long discussion groups—that focused on building the civic virtues of toleration, egalitarianism, and solidarity. In this article, we describe our approach, including the evidence that intergroup dialogue can act as a catalyst for democratic dialogue. We hope that the practice of intergroup dialogue can help other instructors cultivate the civic virtues in their philosophy classrooms as well.¹ Keywords: Democratic Dialogue, Political Polarization, Intergroup Dialogue, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of Gender

Teaching ‘A Sense of Collective Identity’: An Urgent Educative Imperative

Susan T. Gardner — 2023-12-08

Introduction: Climate change is knocking at the door. There have been record-breaking floods in Pakistan, summer wildfires in the Mediterranean area, and a heat wave in Europe that left many dead and strained infrastructure. With regard to climate disasters, Western Canada is pretty much the poster girl, having experienced a “heat dome” in 2021 which caused hundreds of deaths and monstrous wildfires (completely destroying a small town), which was followed by the unprecedented flooding of agricultural land caused by “atmospheric rivers,” which was then book-ended by a drought.

Book Review: Aaron Yarmel reviews Arie Kizel (ed.), Philosophy with Children and Teacher Education: International Perspectives on Critical, Creative and Caring Thinking

Aaron Yarmel — 2023-12-08

Introduction: In Philosophy with Children and Teacher Education: International Perspectives on Critical, Creative, and Caring Thinking, Arie Kizel has curated a collection of 23 chapters authored by 34 insightful P4wC theorists in a conveniently slim volume of only 234 pages (absent the reference section). Each chapter contains valuable introductions to concepts, perspectives, and projects that can be enjoyed without the commitment of a full-length book chapter or article. Since it would be impossible to provide each contribution the space it deserves in this brief review, I will instead focus on notable examples from each of the volume’s five parts and conclude with a few big-picture comments.

Book Review: Maria Miraglia reviews Roberto Franzini Tibaldeo, Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp: Philosophy for Children’s Educational Revolution

Maria Miraglia — 2023-12-08

Introduction: If I had to define this volume with only one expression, I would use the word “dense”. When I read an essay, I usually highlight or underline the salient points to consider for a more systematic study. However, as I was reading, I realized that I was underlining pretty much the whole text. Indeed, there is no part in which the difficult journey of the reconstruction of the pedagogical methodology and the fruitful encounter between Lipman and Sharp is not worthy of note, with the author adding, paragraph after paragraph, an important element for the understanding of the complexity and novelty that the construction of the curriculum of Philosophy for Children (henceforth P4C) has constituted initially in the USA and later in the rest of the world. To address the “educational revolution” of P4C, Tibaldeo travels through the times and the spaces it has occupied (and still occupies). And he does so with a style worthy of a thriller writer, who gradually reveals the unfolding of the plot until its completion. In just a hundred pages, all the reasonings, doubts, sources and theoretical and practical attempts which have characterized the growth of the curriculum to its present form are masterfully described.

Book Review: Richard Morehouse reviews Wayne I. Henry, A Philosopher’s Guide to Natural Capitalism: A Sustainable Future Within Reach

Richard Morehouse — 2023-12-08

Introduction: Professor Henry is a philosopher who teaches courses in the history of analytic philosophy, logic, business, globalization, and sustainability. Wayne Henry and I share an affinity for Philosophy for Children and Community of Inquiry pedagogy. In private discussions led by Wayne Henry, which included Susan Gardner and myself at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (ICPIC) conference in Vancouver, we collaborated on an article vaguely related to the focus of this book: ‘Combatting Consumer Madness’ (2017). Among the reasons that I chose to review this work was to understand how the ideas we wrote about in “consumer madness” had evolved in depth and breadth. To my great pleasure, reading A Philosopher’s Guide to Natural Capitalism: A Sustainable Future Within Reach is much more than expanding that article; it is a philosophical re-conception of capitalism and a profound rethinking of the movement of capitalism from classic liberalism to progressive liberalism to natural capitalism.