December
17, 2004
Tom
Wartenberg: The Importance of Teaching Philosophy to Young
Children
Photo
by: Todd M. LeMieux
Tom
Wartenberg |
Tom Wartenberg, professor and
chair of the philosophy department, not only teaches philosophy
to college students, but also teaches them how to teach philosophy
to elementary schoolchildren. It all started back in the late
1980s when he decided that young people should not wait until
college to study philosophy. In 1990 Wartenberg spent a year’s
leave teaching philosophy to children at the Kelley School in
Holyoke, the school made famous by Tracy Kidder’s best-selling
book Among Schoolchildren.
Wartenberg had neither the time nor
the resources to continue when he returned to full-time teaching
at the College, but when his son Jake enrolled at the Jackson
Street Elementary School in Northampton six years ago, he was
determined to revive his program. Knowing that he could not accomplish
his work single-handed, he sought the aid of college students
who enrolled in his community-based learning course titled Philosophy
for Children.
The course is designed to use children’s picture books as starting points
for discussions among schoolchildren of questions such as “What is courage?” and “What
makes something real?” During the semester, each of Wartenberg’s
students chooses a book, develops teaching materials around it, and works with
an elementary school class. “We do not teach by moralizing to the children,” Wartenberg
said. “We want to encourage kids to think about things, to form a ‘community
of inquiry’ in which they develop their own ideas through interaction with
others. By doing this, children learn to speak, listen, form an argument, and
debate.”
In teaching the course, Wartenberg discovered that the Mount Holyoke students
were a highly effective means of spreading his own expertise and passion for
teaching philosophy to children. Equally important and gratifying to Wartenberg,
the course has had a profound impact on his students’ understanding of
philosophy. While teaching philosophy to children has been done since the 1960s,
Warten-berg is the first person to create a college course in which students
actually teach philosophy to children. The notion seemed so natural to Wartenberg
that he was surprised it had never been done before.
Wartenberg made a documentary of his course, which he aired last summer at an
international conference on philosophy and children. The video was well received,
and one of his fellow conferees has invited him to present his work in Moscow
in January 2005.
More information about Wartenberg’s work on philosophy with children is
available at www.mtholyoke.edu/omc/kidsphil.
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