Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2002
Journal / Book Title
Analytic Teaching
Abstract
We were part of a group of five academics visiting China in July 2000, in order to conduct two workshops in Philosophy for Children in two widely disparate cities - Kunming, in the ethnically diverse, far-from-Beijing southeastern province of Yunnan; and Shanghai, long known as the city where East meets West. Although we could not even read street signs, much less speak at all except through the kindness of interpreters, yet we sensed that Kunming and Shanghai were two different realities of contemporary China. The workshop in Kunming was conducted at the Southern Railway School, where P4C is being spearheaded by a tireless and enthusiastic principal. In Shanghai, our host was the Institute for Research in the Human Sciences, an organization which is at the forefront of the new educational reform movement in China, devoted to principles like active learning and critical thinking. Even though Chinese schools do not look very different from those in the West, China offers an opportunity for Philosophy for Children to question its basis, its methodology, its aims. It seems to be expressing a different cultural voice, and to be disposed to the kind of dialogue we are more used to claiming than practicing.
Book Publisher
Viterbo University
Journal ISSN / Book ISBN
2374-8257
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Kennedy, David K. and Kohan, Walter Omar, "(2002) Philosophy for Children in China: A Late Preliminary Anti-Report" (2002). Collected Papers of David Kennedy. 18.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/dkennedy/18
Published Citation
Kennedy, David and Walter Omar Kohan (2002) Philosophy for Children in China: A Late Preliminary Anti-Report. Analytic Teaching 22(1): 37-49. URL = https://journal.viterbo.edu/index.php/at/article/view/846.