Comprehension and Philosophy in Schools

Philosophy deals with the most fundamental concepts about our existence and what it means to be human in this world. It considers ideas such as: knowledge, truth, meaning, justice, beauty, freedom and consciousness. Our understanding about these ideas influence many aspects of our lives. One of the best ways to involve children in philosophical discussion is to use good children's literature as a vehicle for philosophical discussions in the classroom.

I have included an excerpt from my book, 'Developing Literacy in the Primary Classroom' to show how philosophy, children's literacy and the COR literacy framework can be blended to develop deeper thinking and enquiry learning in the classroom.

"Literature circles and philosophical discussions will position the reader/viewer as a critical analyst who will look for and interpret meanings not just at the surface level but at deeper levels of cognition and metacognition.

Perceptual level: Observing and clarifying: Inferring and clarifying what has been suggested, making a distinction, asking an appropriate question, making an assumption, generalizing, and asking for a reason.

•    What is the author saying?

•    Do you think these points are the most important...?

•    What reasons do you think the author has for saying that?

•    Is the author saying that...?

•    Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't she/she saying ...?

•    What do think the author means by...?

•    Aren't you thinking that...?

•    Could you give me an example from your own experience of...?

Conceptual level: Forming an opinion, clarifying and justifying: Giving a reason, inferring, giving counter examples, and using criteria.

•    In light of what the story was about, do you think that...?

•    Why do you believe that what you said is correct?

•    Can you tell us why you think that?

•    Does anyone else have any questions for …?

•    Do you agree with his/her reasons?

•    Is that evidence good enough?

•    What evidence are you using to make that statement?

•    Is it possible that you and the other person are contradicting each other?

•    Can you try to see the issue from someone else’s point of view?

Metacognitive level: Evaluating individual and group responses: This involves personal reflection and evaluation, and also evaluating the responsiveness of the group.

•    Did we listen to each other well?

•    Did we respect each others’ opinions and ideas?

•    What have we learned from this discussion?

•    Did we use good reasons for what we have said?

•    What has it changed? (Self-correction, concepts, experience, 
attitude).

•    How did you feel about the discussion?

•    Is what you said now consistent with what you said before?"     (Woolley, 2014, p102)

Woolley, G. (2014). Developing literacy in the primary classroom. London: Sage.

Book Review - Thinking Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman 

This was an interesting and thought provoking book. I must admit that I was more interested in part 1 (pages 1 to 105) because it gave me some fresh insights into human cognition and memory. The author simply divides thinking into two systems: system 1 - thinking processes that are automatic, and system 2 - thinking that involves conscious effort. To show the difference between the two systems I will use an illustration from the book.

“Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book ‘The Invisible Gorilla. They constructed a short film of two teams passing basketballs, one team wearing white shirts, the other wearing black. The viewers of the film are instructed to count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on. The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Many thousands of people have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice anything unusual. It is the counting task – and especially the instruction to ignor one of the teams – that causes the blindness. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla.”

The people who are not given the counting task operated using system 1 and tended to see the gorilla because they were not focused on particular details but attended to the more general information. They noticed the unexpected because of its novelty impact. On the other hand those given the counting task used system 2 and focused all their attention on the counting task, they tended to use conscious attention and this meant that they actively ignored other extraneous information. In order to achieve their goal they attended to some things but were bind to others. 

What struck me as being important was that I related this idea to the task of reading - if readers are using conscious attention to decode print then they will miss out on the broader thematic or global ideas that hold a story together. In other words if you attend to the details such as letter by letter or word by word decoding it will overload working memory and other information will tend to be ignored. This also has challenged my thinking about having children set personal reading goals before they read. In other words, if the reading goal is too specific it may narrow the reading focus and some other story information will be ignored.  Alternatively, if the reading goals are made too general then some finer details will be missed. The balance might depend on the purpose for the reading.