20 May 2020

By Yana Manyukhina

Lockdown unquestionably brings significant challenges into children’s education. But it also presents an opportunity for parents and carers ­– and teachers – to create new, more inspiring and more freeing learning environments for children learning at home.

What is enjoyable, effective and easy to implement, while developing children’s cognitive, emotional and social skills? Philosophy. It offers open ended challenges which are fun, and which stretch those brain cells in every direction.

In order to help parents and carers initiate valuable philosophical conversations with children, the team at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy at UCL has designed a new social media campaign called “GetChildrenThinking”. Every week, a different philosophical question appears on the Centre’s Twitter Feed, followed by a mid-week prompt to further ignite and enrich the discussion. The first two are: What is fairness? and What is it like to be a bat? Bring philosophy into your home by following this link.

In my experience of teaching philosophy to primary and secondary students, (more…)