This picture – The Frame Breaker – is made by a child in one of my philosophy classes. He is eight years old at the time and he is drawing it after a philosophical tour at the Swedish National Gallery, the National Museum of Art in Sweden. Unfortunately I added some colors to his drawing so you may not perceive the contours so well, but you can see a copy of the original here, if you like. In the Swedish project we had lots of classes in this museum of art. Our aims were to compare the dialogs in our philosophy classes with in other respects equal classes. That was only one of our tests looking for traces of three years of philosophical training. This picture shows one of the boys in the same class. He is originally dressed in a suit from the seventeen-century. He has been sitting inside those golden frames – or borderlines – like a piece of art from that time. His classmates are involved in an inquiry about whether what they see is art or not. Now he has become tired and is breaking through the frames to join us. He states the conditions for his participation himself. He uses and develops his own concepts. He is not a piece of art. That’s some of the reasons why this picture for me is a symbol for my work with philosophy for children.

As you see – instead of presenting my original paper to the congress – about the dynamics of pupils in philosophy classes, i.e. about pupils that makes philosophy fun and those who makes it useful, for instance the thought builders or constructionists (pictures), the truth-seekers and some differences between boys and girls –, instead of that I have chosen to try to sum up some results of our research project in Sweden. This involves of course parts of my original paper, if the time is available and you are interested. I give a brief summary of a six years long research project, some results and – on the basis of a discovery in one of our tests – a discussion about the appearance of dogmatic relativism in the Swedish schools we investigated. One question raised: "Do we increase the risk of relativism or skepticism with philosophy in school?" Ragnar Ohlsson, the leader of the project, answers. "Yes. And that’s bad" but I say: "No." (But, when having heard the declarations from Michell Sasseville in the round table speech, I think I had to reconsider that standpoint.) Ragnar Ohlsson and I have now in June published a report in the book Filosofi med barn ("Philosophy with Children"), and there are some of our findings and reflections collected.

You have since 1996 on the web had the opportunity to read of the design of the project. So I be short on that topic and instead head for our results and discussion. But I start with my personal drives for introducing P4C to Swedish children. Then you may understand why Ragnar Ohlsson and I respond differently to the risk of relativism or skepticism.

Twenty years ago and after seven years as philosophy teacher in secondary school (high-school or the Swedish gymnasium, that is "grade 12"), I realized that too many pupils (four or five in a class of thirty) were uninterested in anything that wasn’t directly edible or immediately seen as useful. They lacked curiosity and were just looking for the right answers in the narrow school-context. (Some were maybe looking for the overall truth, thinking philosophy should present the meaning of life.) Others tried to study just for credits and not for life. On my question they said they adapted to school. They knew how school was, thought they cracked the code of the school. And maybe they had. But I was discontent and blamed primary or elementary school.

So I found the Philosophy for Children-agenda and took it to primary school to test the possibility to reform the latter. It was 1986 and I worked with Pixxie and the first parts of Harry Stottlemeiers’ Discovery in a class from grade 4 to 6. 1989 Ragnar and I started the more ambitious research project. I worked with one class twice a week in three years. So we should see if the had become immune to the primary school decease.

Now, as teacher in the gymnasium, I have meet some of the gays which studied philosophy in the grades 4-6 and two girls from what we call the experimental class with philosophy in grades 1-3 and tested in grades 1-6, about which we write in our book "Filosofi med barn". There they are there sometimes named Ida and Eva, of course pseudonyms.

The recent year I was their teacher in the Swedish language in a science class. It was their first year in the gymnasium, that is "grade 10". None of them was eager to speak in class. They had fellows who knew how to dominate or just spontaneously let their tongue go. One of the girls, Eva, was really profound and of course she had to make her mind clear before she spoke, the other, Ida, was extremely dependent on exact instructions. She often came sneaking up to me, while her mates were working, asking for the whole pattern: "What shall I do?" or just begging of the way to start writing.

I was perplexed. What had happened to the girl who so very much contributed to our philosophy class in the grades 1-3? She was one of the engaged storytellers. But more than so. Even in one of our tests in the sixth grade she performed splendidly independent.

At last I had an opportunity to ask her why she was so unsure on herself. And she told me maybe what I expected and feared to here

"Everywhere else in school they just told us what to do!"

So we failed to vaccinate this girl to the (primary) school decease. And maybe I made the other girl too concerned with her own thinking for her to really make success in school. Perhaps it is only in the philosophy hours there is time for reflection and non-pragmatic thinking. Thinking just for fun as some gays said.

Well in the latter case our philosophical training should have no wide spreading effects in other school topics. But it seems as it had, at least in mathematical reasoning, reading (in different contexts) and art discussions.

So we did something edible after all. And of course, the most trained class was even more self-governed in philosophical arguing than a class with better social-cultural background and with more intellectual stimulation. (But the latter made instead good literary criticism.)

The outlines of our project

We initiated a research program within compulsory school in Sweden, starting with kids from their first year in school. The main question we wanted to answer was: is it possible that philosophy can further both independent and critical thinking and tolerance? Here seems to be a central problem in the philosophy of education: is it possible to reach both these goals? One hypothesis we wanted to test was: do philosophical discussions with children lead some way towards these two goals which are explicitly mentioned in the curriculum of both compulsory school and secondary school? Furthermore philosophy is often supposed to play an important role to develop intellectual capacities, to make thinking more logical and coherent, but at the same time more open and flexible. Philosophy therefore may be a good preparation for all kinds of study and intellectual work.

The aim of the project was to try to stimulate children's thinking about philosophical problems thereby stimulate their ability to apprehend problems and to see them from different angles. We also considered it important to train the pupils in reasoning, that is, in formulating relevant arguments. The idea was that the pupils through discussion should reach a greater depth of understanding while at the same time becoming more autonomous and less depending on authority. The class should strive together to reach solutions to fundamental problems. We also paid great attention to construing different methods of testing and evaluating the results.

In 1989 the project started in two first grade classes in a school in Uppland Väsby, a suburb of Stockholm. In one of the classes the IAPC method was implemented rather strictly with Matthew Lipman’s books Elfie and Kio and Gus: they had two lessons a week, each 40 minutes long. The parallel class had one lesson a week and used "traditional" books for children like Saint Exupery's Little Prince and Swedish books, and the lessons did not follow the IAPC/p4c model. At the same time we had some philosophy in some other classes according to more mixed methods. One class from a middle class area of Stockholm was tested the first and second year with the purpose of using this class as a control group in later evaluation tests.

The teaching went on throughout the first three years in school. The lessons were tape-recorded and written down wholly or partly. From the fourth grade no philosophy was taught. But in the fourth grade a visit to the National Gallery was used as a part of testing the effects of the philosophy training. In the fifth grade two new tests were performed: one was an investigation of children’s capacity to reason about a mathematical problem, which they as yet hadn't the means to solve, the second was a verbal test, where they had to write answers to specific questions connected with an old Swedish fairy tale. The test in mathematical reasoning was initiated and carried through by an independent group of researchers, who since a long time have been investigating different aspects of children’s grasp of mathematics. Both these tests were carried out also in comparable groups who had had no philosophy.

In grade six two new tests were performed. In one the children got a text with some philosophical problems and were asked to write down their answers to specific questions and to comment upon the text, the other had the form of two test lessons led by a philosophy student without earlier contacts with the classes. A student of pedagogic took part in the lessons as observer. The same two tests were also given in three classes, which had not had philosophy regularly during the first three years in school. The lessons were tape recorded and written down verbally from the tapes. These reports were thoroughly analysed by the two assistants.

Results

We have now analysed most of our results. There is a very obvious tendency in our material: all tests point in the same direction. The class which has had philosophy regularly for three years according to the Philosophy for Children-curriculum does differ on several points from comparable classes (including classes which have had no philosophy at all and those with some philosophy): the pupils of this class 1) give a lot more arguments, 2) better arguments, 3) formulate their standpoints in writing better, 4) has a greater depth of understanding when confronted with a mathematical problem, 5) are less dependent upon authorities and more autonomous and 6) have a greater capacity collectively to reason about solutions of problems. We soon look into some details.

Our book consist in four parts: a description of the design of the project, an account on what did happen (what was fun, what went bad, special lessons, reactions and attitudes and so on) and an account on remaining effects and at last a discussion of the results.

"Best in the world in thinking"

First I make a short comment to our paper presented at the 5th international conference of Philosophy for Children in Graz 1992: Malmhester, B., Ohlsson R., "Children's Protests against Philosophy". There we listed some types of protests of the children and had some explanations of the cause and what to do about them. We still think it’s important to tackle those problems, but we have now (in chapter 5 in our book) a more varied view at the relevance of those arguments for questioning philosophy in school.

We reject the arguments (for not having philosophy in school) most of all on the ground that the pupils also showed obvious signs a great immediate satisfaction, but it took the teacher some time to realize that.

I’ll give you one example from the first grade. The pupils had difficulties in understanding each other’s way of interpreting an episode in Elfie. They argue, read the passage over again, arguing again, and at the end they are united in a way to understand the text. The ones that had misinterpreted the passage are a little bit embarrassed but most of all they are pleased. One boy that argued intensively stand up and shout for joy, like champions in sports. One girl says: "Now I too understand." She stands up too. And so they all do. They even climb their desks, stretches their arms in the sky. They are happy. Now they imitate the soccer players they just seen winning the European Championship. And they clap their hands. The boy shouts: "I’m best in the world in thinking." All shouts: "We are best". And the teacher can hear the girl sing: "I’m so high, so high so you can’t believe it."

The teacher saw this as signs of bragging and was too discontent to notice the subject for the joy. The pupils had really experienced their own abilities in thinking, especially to draw conclusions that everyone could agree upon.

The philosophy teacher had no experience of meeting so young pupils. He was not used to their spontaneous complaint and wail. Most of his ordinary 18 years old students had learnt to repress that demand of immediate satisfaction at the same time as they learnt to withhold (at least some) well-founded criticism.

"Some of those pupils grumbled about everything," said their ordinary teacher this year (June 1999) when comparing the experiment class to other classes she meet.

In the same chapter we also make account for the parents opinion of their children’s three years of philosophizing. One of them points directly at the conflict we noted before: "Maybe the rest of the school have to permeate the same spirit…" if this way of working or thinking will have success. Other parents argue pro and con.

Boys and Girls
In another chapter, of which my original paper is an extension, I make account for the development of some of the philosophical students. Generally in the Swedish compulsory school the girls are more socially concerned and are those who give discussions socially relevant meaning. You could say that they are more serious than the boys. Sometimes the only way to get some boys to really engage in our inquiries, was to invent elements of game or competition.

The boys are often more spontaneous and fanciful. There are more of logical ones and constructionists among them. But gradually girls in our philosophical classes seemed to develop some of the playfulness of the boys in reasoning. At least it was the case in the third year. The girls in the philosophy classes made more intellectual experiments than girls and even boys in comparable classes. They took the roles of more distant observers, i.e. learnt to deliberate. (Contrary to that, boys in one of our control classes seemed to express a heavier feeling of personal guilt: they learned to engage more personally or as private individuals in the moral problems. That was made clear in some interviews.)

Some girls reacted negatively to philosophy: the boys got too fanciful or there were other causes for lack of social relevant meaning. In spite of that – or because of that – they bring examples of everyday life and relationships to the agenda, mostly by story-telling (family anecdotes) but also by references to pictures, movies or literature. Maybe that's why these girls develop playfulness even in connection with tough questions (as you see in our last example).

Who gains by philosophy?

A few boys, who from patterns in their close environment mostly used their fists to solve an argument, now more often found alternative ways for arguing and interest in listening too. We have even an example of an almost autistic boy who learnt the meaning of arguing. One of his more verbal classmates started to interpret his mostly incomprehensible exclamations, coming or arriving when he tried to do what he thought we were doing. That interpretation and our response on them made him gradually grasp the point: there was some kind of exchanging of standpoints, because of his rather odd statements. It was possible to get a message more and more distinct. At the end of the first grade we could hear and understand him arguing.

In respect of arguing we have a striking exemplar of a development of the spontaneous and creative type, Måns. Having jumped into several almost impossible positions and managed to climb up by more precise and complex arguments, he in test three years later expresses a tremendous logical skill and a consistent reasoning. Especially the girls, among them the truth-seeker Astrid, lead him to make his standpoints socially relevant.

To recognize oneself

Spontaneous illustrations
 

Looking in the mirror: "Help, help! Who is he? I’m afraid of him!" This illustrates a distinction between subject and object. You (subject) can see the reflections of yourselves (an object). Several pupils in the experimental class made that distinction, but not the one that draw this picture, I think.
	Ida, in the experimental class have a good sense for the dynamic or chance of identity: "Look! You change like a flower grows." two plus two start to equals four when you five years old. At ten you sum up automatically. "Easily 4 when ten." You see question marks correspond to the age of 0-4, then you can summarize those figures. When ten years old: "Easily 4".

The National Gallery comparison

Many of our classes and some new comparison groups all had the same philosophical tour at the museum. Some other classes were more concerned with learning the pure names of some elements in the pictures. More varied arguments ...

Even the philosophical trained eight-year old grasped the infinite regress in some of the pictures.
 
 

Mathematical reasoning
 

1.0	The test in mathematical reasoning was initiated and carried through by one mathematician (Mats Magnusson) and one in pedagogic (Inger Wistedt), who since a long time have been investigating different aspects of children’s grasp of mathematics. Even this test was carried out in comparable groups who had had no philosophy. Inger Wistedt and Mats Martinsson have published their report in English in Learning and Instruction under the title "Orchestrating a Mathematical Theme: Eleven-year olds Discuss the Problem of Infinity".
0.50	They turned groups of pupils to the problem of the infinite or endless development of decimals in the decimal system. This (see pictures) wooden piece can easily be divided in two and four equally big parts. The children can say exactly how big each piece is in the decimal system: 0.50
0.25	or 0.25 (parts of the whole) respectively.
0.333...	But exactly how big is three equally big parts? Can you give an exact answer yourselves? Is it enough to write down 0.333…? You can write until you die, as one of the pupils said. The pupils are puzzled and try all kinds of solutions.
The class, which has had philosophy regularly for three years, does differ on several points from comparable classes. The pupils of this class has a greater depth of understanding when confronted with the problem, are more autonomous and have a greater capacity collectively to reason about solutions of problems. "It’s like the numbers don’t understand the reality," said the truth-seeker in our experimental class. "You can share an apple if you are three persons."

But I think the investigators here are more interested in the central mathematical reflections than in the over all philosophical attempt in the meeting with the construed or should I say fabricated situation. … I am not convinced that our experimental class was the most philosophical one in that situation. But it was best in talking math, which also was the comment to our first philosophical class.

Anyhow: it did support our thesis that P4C having positive effects in other school subjects. (See Learning and Instruction, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1996, s 173-185 or Filosofi med barn, chapter 6, pp. 173-201.)

Test with philosophical lessons

(About this you can read in Thinking Vol. 12, No 4, 1996, Filosofi med barn, chapter 9, pp. 268-284 or here.)

One philosophy student and one student of pedagogic were instructed to give two lessons in philosophy in four different classes of which one was our experiment class, an other was the parallel class and the third was the control class from an middle class area of Stockholm. Two of the classes had had no philosophy at all.

Two-and-a-half years after the last philosophy lesson in grade 3 we returned to the classes, now in the 6th grade, to see whether we could find any significant differences between the children who had been trained in philosophy and children who had not.

The philosophy student was teacher and pedagogic student was making observations. None of them had any previous contact with the classes, were instructed to give two lessons in philosophy and look out for differences.

The philosophy student Johan reports: "Nevertheless, there is one class, or rather some students in one class, who showed several distinguishing qualities. I am referring to the Tuesday class, where the students had a critical attitude to what was said during the discussion, had no problem with abstract thinking and also seemed to be able to see the consequences that implementations of a theory might bring."

The pedagogic student Monika reports: "In all four classes the students were not as active in the beginning of the lessons as they were at the end of them. The students of the Tuesday class became especially more active as the time passed and they did not seem to care when it was time to finish the lesson. They continued to discuss the subject long after the lesson officially ended. The teacher eventually had to stop the discussion."

We can summarize. What is most striking about these reports is the difference in communication patterns. This is neatly illustrated by the drawings of the pedagogic assistant. (See pictures.) The philosophy pupils talk to each other they use the arguments of peers, they question their arguments. They even question the arguments of the "teacher".

Furthermore, these children seem more involved in the discussion. They focus upon the central problems and carry on the discussion themselves. More children in this class seem to have developed more of a feeling for philosophy than the other classes.

The quality of their argumentation seems also higher, but here the results are uncertain, since the eloquent children in the Wednesday class impressed one of the assistants. A closer look at the arguments used shows that the relevance and ingenuity of the experiment class is higher, although they might not be able to formulate what they think as easily as the Wednesday class. But when compared with children from their own milieu, our' children show greater skill in formulating their thoughts.

The result seems to confirm the idea that systemized training in philosophy results in significant differences in the way the children discuss philosophical problems. The differences are not so striking when it comes to the ability to propose philosophical ideas: many children seem to be able to discuss philosophical problems and come up with good ideas, which confirms the hypothesis behind Philosophy for Children, that children in a way are natural philosophers. The most significant differences are to be found in the way the children talk together, how they use the ideas of their comrades, and how they are able to question the ideas of the "teacher". The philosophy-trained children seem more autonomous and self-reliant. At the same time they form a community of inquiry in a way the other children do not.

Of course, no certain conclusions can be drawn from such a limited material. We have instead tried to evaluate the results of philosophy in primary school by using several different methods in the same classes. Since some patterns are constant and these patterns convincingly can be explained by the training in philosophy, we have reasons to presume that these patterns are effects of the philosophy lessons.

These findings might not astonish people who have long been involved with Philosophy for Children. Nonetheless, we were surprised that these effects were so clearly shown, and that they remained after two-and-a-half years without a single lesson in philosophy. As other evaluations, which have been carried out within the project, seem to show these qualities seem to spread to other subjects, like math.

Ending

In the concluding chapter 11 and 12 we try to answer two questions: "What can philosophy contribute to school?" and the more general one: "Can some good come out of philosophy?" The latter question focus especially on two topics: "Have the pupils in our experimental class become relativists?" That would according to Ragnar Ohlsson really be bad. ‘Cause that could make the pupils stop searching for truth. Well, Ragnar wrote a short paper to this congress about that: about an inherent problem in philosophy with children: how to combine tolerance toward other persons with a respect for truth (maybe we’ll there is na other place for that paper, which I got here). We ask ourselves if this relativistic danger just is typical for the secularized and (the almost dogmatic) democratic northern Europe. Is it so? Do you have any opinions on or experiences of that? The other topic deals with the overall question: "Have our pupils become wiser/more sensible (than others)?" Here Ragnar Ohlsson while finding criteria for the desirable quality ‘wisdom’ answers this question with a frail and delicate "yes". (Carefully formulated "yes".)
 
 

Now some parts of the problem Ragnar sketched for this congress: (Ragnars paper is in an appendix here.)

"Do we increase the risk of relativism or skepticism with philosophy in school?" Ragnar Ohlsson, the leader of the project, answers. "Yes, maybe we do. And that’s bad" but I say: "Perhaps not. The philosophers can fight against the dogma, but then you have to make philosophers of the teachers in the Swedish school."

One of the aims of philosophy with children is to make the children more tolerant - at least that was one of our aims in the Swedish project. The methods of doing philosophy with children are deliberately formed to make the children more open to new solutions, to see problems from different angles, to respect their classmates and to appreciate the points of their views.

This might easily lead the children to accept the idea that philosophical questions have no true answers that each opinion is of equal value. And this worries Ragnar, because he does not believe that it is true.

Our children tried to delimit philosophical questions by a tolerance criterion. Philosophical questions are such that they have no given answers. The step from this to the idea that there are no true answers to philosophical questions or that the truth is relative to person is not so long.

But if they take this step the kids have gained in tolerance but lost in critical thinking. It is true that they might be able to criticize false authorities and look through pretentious claims to have found the truth. But at the same time they may loose their curiosity: why ask questions which have no true answers (or at least you cannot come to know the true answers)? If several answers are equally good, why bother about the answers? You can just keep to your own prejudices, since each opinion is as good as every other.

Not only the children who were trained in philosophy regularly for three years show the tendency towards relativism, but also children from the reference groups. Nonetheless these latter children were presented with some philosophical problems and then said things that seem easy to interpret as signs of relativistic standpoints as far as such problems are concerned. In other words just to introduce children to philosophical problems and discussing them might make them prone to think that such questions lack objectively justifiable answers.

Ragnar is not equally worried about skepticism as of relativism. If discussing philosophical questions with children makes them skeptical, that is they come to believe that we cannot know the truth of fundamental philosophical questions, that might be the correct position. But yet it worries him, because of if he become convinced either that relativism or skepticism is true, then it seems to him probable that this would decrease his curiosity. Why bother about an answer which either is not objectively true or is not possible to reach. In the worst case a child would end up with stubbornly sticking to her own prejudices: since all truth is relativistic (or impossible to reach), the best I can do is to keep to my favorite ideas. Anyhow: no one can show that I am wrong. And irrespective of how much I try, I will never be able to justify my beliefs rationally. So why bother?

In practice it is so difficult to respect each child and her opinion and at the same time make the group aware of the importance of finding the true answers to the philosophical questions we discuss.

This is especially hard since we do not know which answer is the correct one, and therefore we cannot show the children the difference between the true and the false answer. The best we can do is to stress the difference between good ways to argue for some answer and bad ways to do it. And even then we have to be very careful not to discourage some of the kids.

I ask you again. It seems as if some kind of programmatic tolerance is part of the modern culture. It would be very interesting to know if this is typical of the modern world or if it is a feature only of some Northern European countries, perhaps peculiar to Sweden?
 
 

English publications within the Swedish project

Some English texts within the research project are published in different contexts, among others the following. You can also find some English text at our homepage in the web, "http://hem2.passagen.se/bmr/" for instance Ragnar Ohlsson’s presentation of our project and my original paper to this congress, which is a development of one chapter in our book.

• Malmhester, B., Ohlsson R., "Children's Protests against Philosophy", Children: Thinking and Philosophy, ed. Camhy, D., Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin, 1994. Contains papers presented at the 5th international conference of Philosophy for Children in Graz 1992.
• Niklasson, J., Ohlsson, R., Ringborg M., "Evaluating Philosophy for Children", Thinking, Vol. 12, No 4, 1996
• Inger Wistedt and Mats Martinsson have touched upon our project in some publications, among others in: "Orchestrating a Mathematical Theme: Eleven-year olds Discuss the Problem of Infinity", Learning and Instruction, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1996, s 173-185.

You can (in our circulating list) order an abstract of

• Ragnar Ohlsson’s philosophical story Meningen med livet (1998, Alfabeta, Stockholm) "The meaning of life". Here the author really states the meaning, despite the question mark on the cover.

Malmhester & Ohlsson: Filosofi med barn. Reflektioner över ett försök på lågstadiet. (1999, Carlsson, Stockholm) "Philosophy with Children. Reflections on an experiment in elementary school."