Çocuklarla Felsefe

Abstract

For children, philosophy means a philosophical dialogue. It is made by groups. Individual classical philosophical intellectual conclusions have been replaced by group discussion. It is important to ask a question. The teacher directs the discussion. He/She gives feedback. They guide how they discuss. Teacher is the only authority in the teacher-centered education, but in the philosophical activity for children, the authority is shared with children.

The aim of the program of philosophy for children is to develop their cause-andeffect building skills and to support children’s ability of judge by thinking about concepts that are important to them. What is important here is to ask questions about the main problems encountered and to think in the direction of these questions. Lipman; believes that when children are blended with the philosophy of curiosity and exploration from nature, children will turn into adults who can think more flexibly and effectively in the future. However, the teachings of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, which are mentioned here, are not taught in class. The approach of Philosophy for Children based on; exploring children through stimuli that are intriguing, imaginative, and fun for them, such as stories and poems; acquire the skills necessary to think about the issues that are directly related to their past, present and future. Philosophy experiences provide that children discover concepts such as righteousness, beauty, goodness, justice. The discovery of new thoughts, ideas and problems have significant effects on children’s lives.

In the twentieth century, freedom, autonomy, rationality, taking responsibility for their behavior, critical thinking, liberal emphasis, knowledge construction are remarkable elements of education. Intellectual education has an important place in education problems in Turkey as well as in the whole world. The general problem is the fact that we have lost interest and care, wonder and amazement in our childhood years, over a period of years. This reality that we face increasingly in the educational institution does not change much for the countries of the world. Recent research has also supported this result, so it has become a necessity to handle and examine it. Acquiring knowledge that is fundamental to education in our times, is not through teacher to student as in the past. Information is on the computer at the tip of a button. From now on, the task of the school is to teach how to produce knowledge from this information, to teach how to evaluate the data by questioning. The student should not be sentenced to education based on memorization.

The education strict on memorization should be criticized for restricting mental activities and for blocking new ideas. Education should develop the ability of comprehension and judgement. But in our day, the emphasizing of the themes such as the autonomy and freedom, rationality of the individual so many and unlimited makes it difficult to protect in a fair way the place of human in other beings. The self-confident and self-centered view of human self-consciousness is interpreted as the work of enlightenment with ecological and human disaster. The importance of the principle man’s self-awareness influences every era.

At the beginning of my study, the problem of thinking education was handled in the direction of some research results. In the later part of our study, the notion of philosophy for children is handled in various ways. Do children have proficiency in philosophy? What is the purpose of philosophical method and how is its method? How should the role of the teacher be? How is the perception of philosophy in education in our country? In the last section, the philosophical disciplines in the frame of ethics are presented with a summary of the “Kaşağı” (traditional child story) and a possible philosophical discussion model for children. Finally, the results and bibliography are included.