Philosophy and Children

We’ve all heard the saying ‘Children are natural scientists.’
They look at, touch, taste, hear, and generally inspect EVERYTHING from toilet seats to pine needles every day until something happens somewhere along the way that drubs the curiosity right out of them. Either that or they become scientists. I think the awareness of the need for science education in schools is generally high and typically the US is very pragmatic about the requirement. “We will be technologically behind the curve without a strong scientific base!” is probably a plank in every political stump speech from here to there. The execution on that goal may be anecdotally or even systemically questioned every step of the way but most people and institutions with clout think science is important.

How many people think philosophy is important?
How many people know what philosophy is? I have encountered many people who think philosophers, at worst, do/did a lot of mind bending drugs or, at best, do/did very little of anything related to actual coursework in college. Part of the problem is their perception and part of the problem is “in college”.
Let me talk about this in my own way by asking another question:

Have you ever heard a child say ‘Why?’ ?

“Why is the sky blue?” is the type of question that previous generations worried about but I would claim that the aforementioned science education in this country (and others) make that question relatively easy to answer (or at least approximate) for many people. With the explosion of the information age, it is even easier to look up.

What about these questions?:
“Why is it wrong?”
“Why do I perceive the sky as blue?”
“Why do you like that painting?”

If you have never heard a child ask those questions before then you probably haven’t been poked with “Why?” long enough to answer the poor little struggling philosopher with “Because I said so” leaving them in a dry riverbed facing the mind’s equivalent of a flash flood. Children want to learn why, they CAN’T WAIT to learn why. The connections they are making and the inputs they are processing are happening with the urgency of so much water.

So What?
What if we could arm the next generation with the tools to investigate why things are unethical? or pretty? or hierarchical? or blue? Don’t lose focus here, I am not talking about “Why the sky is blue” I am talking about “Why BLUE is blue?”.
I am not trying to be profound or patronizing, just descriptive. That is philosophy. Trying to understand what really exists, trying to understand what it means to be wrong or right, trying to understand what it means to be pretty or ugly, and how we can even really ever “know” any of that. And lastly, even if I purport to recognize what is there, if it is wrong, and when it is ugly how can I communicate it to another person so they too might understand why?

It is different from science, it is different from rhetoric (politics), and less understood but unequivocally true it is different from theology. Those all have their place in varying degrees and locations but no politician is claiming that “We will be behind the curve of UNDERSTANDING without a strong base in philosophy!” They don’t say that because they fail to actually understand philosophy and they don’t have to tools to wonder about figuring it out. That and the more pragmatic reason (from a politicians perspective), because most of us in the world still answer “Because I said so”. I have done it too.

We should start educating our children in philosophy now and not wait for college or self discovery so our children can have a meaningful discussion with our grand-children about why blue is blue. This isn’t trivial and if you consider this trite or if you think what I claim doesn’t have value then my rhetoric stinks, not philosophy.

The Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children is run by philosophers for the last 10 years from the University of Washington and among other things the organization includes a recommended reading list for children of all ages to introduce philosophy and critical thinking skills.

Everyone is behind the curve without philosophers just the same as everyone is behind the curve without scientists.