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Childhood & Philosophy

versión impresa ISSN 2525-5061versión On-line ISSN 1984-5987

child.philo vol.17  Rio de Janeiro  2021  Epub 28-Feb-2021

https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2021.55786 

Artigos

Is there a form of citizenship specific to philosophy for children?

¿Hay una forma de ciudadanía específica de la filosofía para niños?

Existe uma forma de cidadania específica da filosofia para crianças?

IEcole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France, E-mail: clarleseigneur@gmail.com


abstract

Due to the obvious and widely studied Deweyan foundations in the educational program elaborated by philosopher Mathew Lipman, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is often presented as a continuation of Dewey’s ideal, which understands democracy as a “mode of associated living.” I argue that there is a democratic model specific to Lipman’s P4C that cannot be reduced to Dewey’s theories. To do so, I propose to compare Dewey’s and Lipman’s educational models through the Bourdieusian notion of habitus, understood as a set of lasting mental dispositions, following a specific social conditioning, revealed by some practical habits. Studying Dewey’s and Lipman’s educational recommendations concerning inquiry in depth not only reveals that they are structured according to different rationalities, it also highlights the fact that they tend to develop different habits and dispositions in the child, that ultimately form two distinct forms of citizen habitus. Dewey’s habitus could be called experimental and Lipman’s habitus dialogical, and they both correspond to their respective reflections on democracy and the role a citizen should be playing in it. I conclude by highlighting the interesting possibilities that stem from the analysis and comparison of educational models through the notion of habitus.

keywords: philosophy for children; democracy; habitus; lipman; dewey; bourdieu

resumen

Debido a los obvios y ampliamente estudiados fundamentos deweyanos en el programa educativo elaborado por el filósofo Matthew Lipman, Filosofía para Niños (FpN) a menudo es presentada como una continuación del ideal democrático de Dewey. Sostengo que existe un modelo democrático específico a la Filosofía para Niños de Lipman, que no puede ser reducido a las teorías de Dewey. Para hacer esto, propongo de comparar los modelos educativos de Dewey y Lipman a través de la noción bourdieuana de habitus, entendida como un conjunto de disposiciones mentales duraderas, que siguen un específico condicionamiento social y que se revelan en algunos hábitos prácticos. Estudiar en profundidad las recomendaciones educativas de Dewey y Lipman en relación a la investigación, no sólo revela que se estructuran de manera acorde a diferentes racionalidades, sino que además destaca el hecho de que tienden a desarrollar diferentes hábitos y disposiciones en el niño, que en última instancia forman dos habitus ciudadanos distintos. El habitus de Dewey podría ser llamado experimental, y el habitus de Lipman dialógico, y ambos se corresponden con sus respectivas reflexiones sobre la democracia y el rol que un ciudadano debería desempeñar. Concluyo subrayando las interesantes posibilidades que brotan del análisis y comparación de los modelos educativos a través de la noción de habitus.

palabras clave: filosofía para niños; democracia; habitus; lipman; dewey; bourdieu.

resumo

Devido aos óbvios e amplamente estudados fundamentos Deweyanos presentes no programa educacional elaborado pelo filósofo Mathew Lipman, a Filosofia para Crianças é frequentemente apresentada como uma continuação do ideal democrático de Dewey, como um modo de vida associado. Sustento que existe um modelo democrático específico à Filosofia para Crianças elaborada por Lipman, que não pode ser reduzida às teorias de Dewey. Para tanto, proponho comparar os modelos educacionais de Dewey e de Lipman por meio da noção bourdieusiana do habitus, entendida como um conjunto de disposições mentais duradouras, provenientes de um condicionamento social específico, que se manifesta por alguns hábitos práticos. Estudar em profundidade as recomendações educacionais de Dewey e de Lipman relativas à investigação não só revela que elas estão estruturadas de acordo com diferentes racionalidades, mas também destaca o fato de que tendem a desenvolver hábitos e disposições diferentes na criança, que acabam por formar dois habitus de cidadão distintos. O habitus de Dewey pode ser denominado experimental, e o habitus de Lipman dialógico, e ambos correspondem às suas respectivas reflexões sobre a democracia e o papel que um cidadão deve desempenhar. Concluo destacando as possibilidades interessantes que emergem da análise e da comparação de modelos educacionais por meio da noção de habitus.

palavras-chave: filosofia para crianças; democracia; habitus; lipman; dewey; bourdieu.

is there a form of citizenship specific to philosophy for children?

introduction

The analysis of John Dewey’s legacy in Philosophy for Children (P4C), and more precisely in Matthew Lipman’s work - Lipman being considered as one of the major founders of such pedagogy, along with Ann-Margaret Sharp - is a research topic that has been largely discussed, so much so that it has almost become a commonplace. Among other things, this has to do with Lipman’s explicit and recurring references to the American pragmatist throughout his work. For instance, in a retrospective article entitled “Philosophy for Children’s Debt to Dewey” (Lipman, 2008), he states that “Philosophy for Children is built unapologetically on Deweyan foundations.” Consequently, many commentators have tried to bring these foundations to light. Among them, one can name Jennifer Bleazby, who stresses that both Dewey and Lipman reject problematic dualisms (Bleazby, 2007), but also David Kennedy, who shows how philosophical inquiry drive towards the reconstruction of habits in a Deweyan sense (Kennedy, 2012), or even Marie-France Daniel an al., who explain how Lipman’s pedagogy promotes Dewey’s democratic ideal (Daniel and al., 1992). Although a large majority of researchers do not deny that there are important pedagogical differences between the two authors, they also seem to agree that Lipman’s version of P4C can help realize Dewey’s democratic ideal of associated life. However, a study that would link these pedagogical differences between Dewey’s and Lipman’s models with a potential divergence regarding their democratic conceptions is still missing, and this is precisely what I am proposing to do in this article.

Rather than focusing on the most obvious connections between education and democracy (such as, for instance, the values that are explicitly transmitted by a teacher, or the skills that are consciously acquired by a student), I propose to analyze Dewey’s and Lipman’s pedagogical systems through the notion of habitus, taken from Pierre Bourdieu’s work. The lens of habitus offers an interesting perspective by putting the stress on the child’s unconscious knowledge acquisition and on the practical habits he or she internalizes throughout the socialization process. I contend that there is a continuity between the educational habitus and the citizen habitus in so far as individuals internalize a number of habits that are related to community living, rules and authority when they are in school, that they tend to reproduce in their civic life. In that respect, studying pedagogical systems through habitus enables us to identify competing political conceptions. If one understands citizenship as participation in political life, the set of dispositions and tendencies to act a certain way that forms the habitus is the seed that will grow in a specific form of citizenship. The fact that different educational models can seek and built various habits hints at a conflict between diverging conceptions of democracy. In the case of the Dewey-Lipman comparison, this analysis allows us to identify two distinct educational habitus, from which two citizen habitus can be derived. On that basis, this analysis seeks to underline the uniqueness of Lipman’s Philosophy for Children, which cannot be limited to a mere continuation of Dewey’s democratic project.

1. the irreducibility of lipman’s p4c to john dewey’s pedagogy the deweyan roots of lipman’s pedagogy

If Lipman was unquestionably innovative when he started his project of introducing philosophy in primary school at the end of the 1960s, he did not build his thinking from scratch. Rather, he largely drew on arguments and theses that were put forward by previous philosophers, and in that regard one can speak of a variety of roots of P4C. Among them, one can mention Socrates, Lev Vygotsky, Gareth Matthews or even Charles Sanders Peirce, although it must be recognized that Dewey’s influence remains of primary importance in Lipman’s work. One can underline several Deweyan foundations in Lipman’s pedagogy: (1) his philosophy of childhood, which rejects a comparative perspective between children and adults, and which gives children the opportunity to exert their rationality so they can become autonomous individuals, rather than simply preparing them for future autonomy; (2) his outlook on inquiry, which becomes the center of the educational process, and which takes the form of a collective quest as a response to a problematic and incomplete situation; (3) and finally his guidelines concerning the teacher-student relationship: without embodying some vertical authority, the teacher continues to play a major role, given that he or she is the one laying down the conditions of the inquiry.

I believe that these Deweyan foundations point to a common basis in terms of democratic habitus: for the two authors, citizenship implies individual autonomy built in relation to the community. It also involves a collective action that takes the form of an inquiry, and it is based on a fallibilist conception of both authority and the research process. As a consequence, this Deweyan heritage makes it impossible to clearly delineate the theories of these two authors, be it on a pedagogical or on a democratic level.

two pedagogies structured according to different rationalities

However, I do not think that P4C in its Lipmanian version can be reduced to the mere application of Dewey’s pedagogical advice to philosophy, nor can it be the mere continuation of his project. Of course, both philosophers have built their educational models on the notion of inquiry, a process that starts when the subject realizes that his or her beliefs are being put into question when confronted with an incomplete situation, which pushes him or her to rebuilt said beliefs and analyze the problem at issue. However, they have not structured their teaching methods according to the same rationality.

If we take a closer look at Dewey’s educational model, we can see that experience plays an essential role. Dewey writes at the turn of the 20th century, at a time when education seems to be limited to the transmission of dry knowledge, disconnected from social issues. He thus recommends introducing activities in schools, such as cooking, gardening or other hand on wood experiences, so that they can become places where meaningful experiences happen. His pedagogy is intricately linked to psychological considerations, as he defines thought as “the discernment of the relation between what we try to do and what happens in consequence.” (Dewey, 1916, XI). For Dewey, thinking emerges in an incomplete situation when we feel that something is uncertain. This uncertainty then compels the subject to find a way to reach his or her goals, to investigate and test a number of hypotheses in order to come out of that incomplete situation. Dewey’s belief that there is a deep connection between experience and thinking leads him to introduce activities such as cooking, gardening, or sewing in schools. Such activities are the starting point of the inquiry: during collective projects, students run into difficulties; to overcome them, they need to make meaningful use of their past experiences, analyze the situation, and come up with hypotheses. Then, they test them but putting them into practice and they repeat this operation until they reach their goal. The Deweyan pedagogical process is therefore structured according to an experimental rationality, if by “experimentation” we mean a method that requires the systematic use of experience in order to test a hypothesis and by “rationality” we mean an organization of the curriculum according to specific criteria to order and validate propositions. In this regard, science is a model of excellence in terms of thinking as well as knowing. It does not mean that Dewey disregards the other school subjects in the curriculum, but rather points to the fact that in each subject area, skills of observation, consequence analysis and prediction - characteristic of scientific experimentation - need to be practiced one way or another, while experience always remains the criterion for the validity of a proposition.

If we now take a look at Lipman’s pedagogy, we can see that active experience does not play the same role. Of course, Lipman also wishes to articulate education to the child’s experience: the community of philosophical inquiry (as is described in Thinking in Education) does not usually start with an activity as in Dewey, but with the reading of a fictional text that features a philosophical problem such as those children can encounter in daily life. Yet, this does not fall under Dewey’s critique of bookish and abstract education, since the text encourages young readers to identify themselves with the characters and to mobilize their own experiences in relation to the philosophical problem at stake. Besides, the students’ experiences can be mobilized throughout the dialogue as examples that can be articulated to concepts or arguments. Nevertheless, the Lipmanian inquiry does not illustrate an experimental rationality strictly speaking, given that what is generally at issue is not to test hypotheses and definitions by submitting them to practical testing within the community of philosophical inquiry, but rather to submit them to the test of communal evaluation. The result of this collective use of logical tools might be called a philosophical progress. This explains why the end of the discussion stresses more on metacognition (through a collective recognition of this philosophical progress and artistic realizations that materialize the children’s answers) than on experimentation.

One could object that Lipman’s philosophical inquiry is just as action-oriented and practice-oriented as the Deweyan inquiry. Since the problem that is addressed during the dialogue is intricately linked to the children’s experience, the evolution of their thinking is likely to influence their values and actions. Of course, the philosophical inquiry is a discussion-based exercise, but the new meanings that emerge out of it have practical and existential consequences. This idea is expressed by Maughn Gregory (Gregory, 2007):

How a new philosophical judgment might be tested in experience and what difference it could or should make in the lives of those who have reached it are questions that are not emphasized in the P4C curriculum but are integral to the purpose of philosophical inquiry indicated above: reaching philosophical judgments that are personally meaningful. Inquiry that ceases with the dialogue, without a component of action and reflection on action, is limited in its meaning, and especially in its personal meaningfulness.

Here, Gregory takes up Douglas Walton’s classification of dialogues into six types and applies them to the various steps of Lipman’s philosophical inquiry. He explains that the fifth step of the community of philosophical inquiry (encouraging further responses) should include what Walton calls “deliberation,” that is to say a type of dialogue in which participants reason together on how to proceed when they are confronted by a practical problem. Although he admits that Lipman does not fully explore the practical impact of dialogue, it nonetheless remains an essential aspect of the philosophical journey. Indeed, if the judgements that are produced by the community are truly meaningful, they will modify the participants’ thinking and subsequently their actions. I certainly recognize that the philosophical inquiry is action-oriented, but I would also like to underline two things. First, practical application is made far less explicit and is far less showcased in Lipman’s version of the inquiry. Second, experience is not given the exact same role as it is in Dewey's version: putting a philosophical judgement into practice does not serve the same function as experimental testing. For me, this difference does not point to a flaw in Lipman’s pedagogy, but rather indicates that it is structured according to a different rationality, which I propose to define as dialogical. During the philosophical inquiry, young people challenge their beliefs and assess various propositions according to logical criteria and rules, but also according to the capacity to include someone else’s point of view and to come up with original thinking. This dialogical mode of operation is intricately linked to the notion of multidimensional thinking - a notion Lipman is particularly fond of -, which aims at finding a balance between critical thinking (aimed at the production of reasonable and self-correcting judgements), creative thinking (based on originality and authenticity), and caring thinking (which implies the individual’s commitment to the philosophical question and empathy towards other participants). For Lipman, philosophical dialogue is a model of excellence in terms of multidimensional thinking, and as such it represents a reference for all kinds of inquiries in school (since school aims at the development of good thinking). Furthermore, philosophy is characterized by a metacognitive dimension: “What philosophy involves is learning to think in the disciplines, while at the same time learning to think self-correctively about one’s own thinking.” (Lipman, 1988). By reflecting on problematic dimensions of other disciplines, it offers a critical outlook on their aims and methods, and thus enables the student to better understand and practice them. It is for both of these reasons - the fact that it represents a model of multidimensional thinking and that it offers a self-correcting and metacognitive outlook on other subject areas - that Lipman wants to put philosophical dialogue at the core of the education system as a whole.

These considerations are in no way intended to establish a dualism between science and philosophy: it would be unproductive and unfounded, because these two fields share common ground and because logic and experience play an essential part in both cases. What is at stake is rather to show that Dewey’s and Lipman’s pedagogies are not structured according to the same rationality and that, therefore, they are different enough to produce two distinct citizen habitus.

2. habitus: a political perspective on pedagogical differences

Before taking a closer look at the differences between Dewey’s and Lipman’s democratic conceptions, I will first clarify why I am making this association between educational models and political models.

bourdieu’s habitus

If the notion of habitus existed before Bourdieu’s work, the term has taken on a very specific meaning since then, and it is worth going briefly over his texts to clearly identify the issues at stake. Bourdieu’s first striking definition of habitus is to be found in The Logic of Practice (Bourdieu, 1992):

The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively 'regulated' and 'regular' without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor.

Despite its length, complexity, and seemingly abstruse nature, this definition emphasizes several key elements. First, habitus is a “systems of durable, transposable dispositions,” that is to say a coherent set of tendencies that come from a specific conditioning, and that are mainly acquired in early childhood while also taking subsequent social experiences into account. In this respect, these are durable but not rigid dispositions, because they are likely to evolve over time. They are also transposable from one context to the other: a child who has acquired a certain habitus at home, for instance, will be able to apply it at school. Then, it should be noted that habitus is a “principle which generate and organize practices and representations.” This set of dispositions that comes from social conditioning therefore determines people’s behavior and world view, and in that regard, it manifests itself in a number of practical habits. As Bourdieu puts it, « Habitus, as systems of dispositions to practice, are an objective basis of regular conducts, hence of regularity of conducts […] » (Bourdieu, 1986). Habitus is a form of practical wisdom on which behavior consistency is based, but it does not rule out the possibility of exceptions. Rather, it implies a predisposition to act a certain way in certain circumstances, all the while leaving room for vagueness and indeterminacy - which explains why it is not pure conditioning. Lastly, Bourdieu’s definition suggests that habitus generates practices “without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends” on the part of the subject, and without “an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them” on the part of the social group, despite the consistency of habitus among its members (hence the image of a collectively orchestrated whole that does not need a conductor). Habitus comes from a spontaneous adjustment, without there being any express planning or scheming on the part of social agents.

comparing theories through habitus

This is simply a summary of Bourdieu’s theses, that is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to establish a conceptual framework that is necessary to better understand the following pedagogical analyses. Bourdieu applied his theses to the educational sphere in order to draw attention to the reproduction of social inequality; what I am proposing here is rather to study habitus as a potential link between education and politics. We have seen that habitus is both durable and transposable; as a consequence, the habitus the child has internalized at school in relation to collectivity, authority, and rules, is likely to be transposed in social life in a broad sense as well as in political activity more specifically, so much so that educational habitus can be converted into citizen habitus. For example, when the school environment encourages a disposition to passive learning, or a disposition to group belonging, these dispositions will be performed in class through practical habits (especially via the relationship with the teacher and with other students), but also later in political life, through the relation to government and the social body. What makes the notion of habitus particularly interesting in this perspective is that it is unconsciously internalized and used by the student. Whereas education for citizenship transmits a number of values and helps develop a number of skills through a relatively conscious process - a process in the face of which the student can form an opinion, either by agreeing with what has been transmitted or by rejecting it -, habitus is the result of a diffuse and repeated conditioning which, if it is not necessarily out of hand, is nonetheless implemented rather spontaneously. Habitus comes as a result of habituation and thus becomes similar to a second nature, in that it is always ready to be used, be it as a tendency or as a capacity to act in a certain way. Accordingly, it is relatively difficult to move away from habitus, even though it is neither pure determination nor thoughtless habit. Another specificity of habitus compared to the values and skills that are taught in citizenship education is that it is aimed at implicitly. It is not so much an explicit goal that has been set by the teacher or educator, as a model, a set of good habits that they seek to instill in the child depending on their own standards. Of course, this implicit goal of habitus depends on the explicit objectives the pedagogue has set for himself - as is the case with Dewey and Lipman - but it cannot be limited to these. What makes this analysis interesting is that it can potentially be applied to any pedagogy, including those that do not lay out political goals: by analyzing the set of dispositions and practical habits that are developed in any given educational model, one can potentially always identify a citizen habitus and its corresponding political model.

To sum up, habitus can be defined as a set of lasting mental dispositions, following a specific social conditioning, revealed by some practical habits. I do not mean to use the term with all the connotations and subtleties it might have in Bourdieu’s work, but rather as a relatively flexible conceptual tool that is inherited from sociology, and which can provide valuable insight into the link between pedagogical and political models. If the political reading of educational models through the lens of habitus can be applied to all pedagogies, such analytical method is in a sense anachronistic in Dewey’s and Lipman’s cases, given that the concept of habitus is applied retrospectively. This approach might be nonetheless justified, first by the similarities between the notion of habitus and some concepts developed by the two authors. One the one hand, Dewey believes that habits play a central role in education and he speaks of “fixed habits” to refer to “powers so well established that their possessor always has them as resources when needed” (Dewey, 1916, IV), a description that could very well apply to the habitus. On the other hand, Lipman conceptualizes the notion of “character” as “the ensemble of habits […] shaped by the forms of participation in which that person engages.” (Lipman, 1988), which also echoes the mode of acquisition of habitus. But beyond these similarities, comparing Dewey’s and Lipman’s educational models through habitus is relevant because the specificity of the Bourdieusian notion (namely its implicitness and its unconsciousness among a social group) brings out fruitful implications as it helps identify two distinct conceptions of democracy.

3. aiming at two distinct democratic models

As I mentioned in introduction, Lipman’s P4C is mostly presented as a pedagogy that either helps realize or helps continue Dewey’s democratic ideal as a mode of social life and collective inquiry - an idea that can be found, for instance, in Daniel, Schleifer and Lebouis’s article (Daniel and al. 1992). At the beginning of their article, there is a sentence that can seem trivial but which I believe is quite revelatory: “We all know that by the concept of democracy we mean co-existence and autonomous, critical and reasonable judgment (and behavior).” I am more interested in the first part of the sentence than in the second, because it reveals a widespread assumption: by “democracy” we all mean the same thing. Yet I think this assumption is what leads one to erase the difference between the two political models that are respectively aimed at by Dewey and Lipman. The definition of democracy seems so intuitive to us that we cannot spontaneously imagine several conceptions competing with one another. But establishing a connection with the educational sphere - and with pedagogical differences - helps shatter this seeming uniformity and helps shed some light on the diversity of democratic models. Of course, there is no outright opposition between Dewey’s and Lipman’s political models, given that they share a number of common features; yet they are different enough to be distinguished, thus allowing Lipman’s model to be something else than the mere continuation of Dewey’s project. Comparing their respective political thinking with the habitus their pedagogies develop helps highlighting this difference.

dewey: democracy as a collective experimentation

Briefly summarizing Dewey’s theses on democracy is not an easy task, but one can still underline the key elements of his political theory. First, democracy is not so much a form of government for him as a form of social living, “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (Dewey, 1916, VII). This mode of living can be divided into two key features: first, the diversification of shared interests and their importance in the organization of collective living; second, free interaction between social groups and the constant readjustment of habits in regard to this diversity of relations. For Dewey, democratic life is not a mode of living among others, but the full realization of community and of its most fruitful aspects. Within that framework, each individual needs to think of his or her action as involving that of others, because possibilities of actions are conditioned by the social environment and because each individual action may affect other subjects. Dewey’s considerations in The Public and its Problems explain in greater detail how such society can function by introducing the concept of the “public,” which he defines as “all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.” (Dewey, 1927, I). Public servants and legal institutions are in charge of monitoring these consequences, given that they are responsible for the interests of the public they represent. Therefore, the public needs to identify himself in order to have enough clout to choose its elected officials, and thus promote its shared interests. However, Dewey points out an eclipse of the public: evolving sociohistorical conditions have altered the capacity to perceive consequences by intensifying transportation and communication networks, thus leading to a dismantling of the democratic public. In this new framework, consequences are felt and suffered, rather than controlled and known, that is to say referred to their origins. For Dewey, the solution to this crisis of the public is to be found in communication, which needs to take the form of a social inquiry that draws inspiration from the experimental method. Faced with a difficulty, citizens need to be able to organize themselves as a community, and implement their proposals for social actions as if they were hypotheses that need to be constantly revised, rather than dogmas that need to be applied at all costs.

This is again a brief summary, but it should be sufficient to point out the convergence that exists between Dewey’s educational habitus and citizen habitus, as both of them are characterized by an inclination towards experimentation. The key features of this Deweyan habitus are therefore:

  1. 1) amicable cooperation, or the capacity to think and act as a group. Dewey’s pedagogy accustoms children to solving problems by pooling their experiences and sharing tasks from an early age, which helps develop commitment to the group and an inclination for cooperation, two features that we find in Dewey’s political theory.

  2. 2) attention to consequences: faced with a problem, children need to investigate and test their hypotheses on their own. This leads them to imagine what the consequences could be and then to observe these consequences closely. This habitus of observation and prediction of consequences can also be found in Dewey’s version of citizenship in his political theory: in order to form a public, individuals need to be able to identify the consequences that affect them collectively and refer them to their origins so they can control them.

  3. 3) a tendency to action: in Dewey’s educational model, children are not faced with teachers embodying some vertical authority and therefore they do not develop a passive habit towards authority figures, but rather a propensity to act. Since they are not presented with ready-made knowledge, they are encouraged to act and test the validity of their ideas according to the experimental structure of the inquiry. Once again, this inclination to act can be found in the democratic sphere as well: citizens are not passive faced with government authority but are instead capable of finding new modes of social action in the face of difficulty.

lipman: democracy as a rational, self-corrective community

Describing Lipman’s conception of democracy is equally complex because he has not dedicated one of his works solely to political questions, those being always treated in relation to education. One can still identify the key features of his idea of democracy by analyzing scattered reflections. For instance, he mentions in Philosophy Goes to School that “it is commonly accepted that a democratic society consists of citizens equipped to assess how well the institutions of that society are working. Such evaluation necessarily requires citizens who have facility in employing criteria.” (Lipman, 1988) As in Dewey’s political philosophy, democratic society takes the form of a social inquiry, that is to say an inquiry whose object is society as a whole (not only political institutions, but all kinds of organized living) and which is meant to permeate all areas of society. However, it does not run along the same lines: in Dewey’s theory, citizens assess and modify institutions depending on their consequences; for Lipman, it depends of their ability to validate a number of criteria (notably, ideals such as liberty or justice). We can reasonably assume that this social inquiry takes the form of a rational dialogue between citizens, even though Lipman does not give much indication as to the institutional modalities of such dialogue.

Once again, a convergence between educational habitus and citizen habitus can easily be identified. There is no question that it shares a number of common features with the Deweyan habitus, but three specific characteristics can be underlined nonetheless:

  1. 1) a disposition to metacognitive evaluation: through the regular practice of philosophical dialogues, children acquire the habit of evaluating propositions through the prism of explicit criteria. By doing so, they develop a spontaneous use of logical tools and a metacognitive sensitivity to what makes thinking good. This logician habitus is reinforced by the last stage of the inquiry, when children evaluate the dialogue and identify the progress that was made and the difficulties that occurred. In turn, this encourages them to engage in individual and collective self-correction. Citizens are also found to have this disposition: just as the child does not see the teacher as an indisputable source of authority, citizens are not in a passive situation towards democratic institutions, they see it as fallible and perfectible. They need to adopt a rational approach in order to evaluate collectively institutions and be able to make explicit and discuss their own criteria with other citizens, so that a self-corrective society can emerge.

  2. 2) a habit of inclusion and co-construction: P4C gets children used to letting others speak, especially those who have talked the least during the dialogue. Indeed, Lipman’s educational program insists on the distribution of speaking, in the first steps of the inquiry (the reading of the text and the choice of a question), but also afterwards. The teacher tries to encourage those who have spoken the less to participate, and since he is supposed to gradually step aside, students are to ensure this even distribution by themselves and it becomes a habit. P4C also gets them used to co-construction, that is to say to include the thoughts of others in their interventions. Children are encouraged to build their interventions on what has been said previously and, if at first it might be an artificial effort, it gradually becomes spontaneous. For citizens, these habits imply a disposition to let groups that are potentially excluded from the public debate speak, along with a tendency to consider opinions that are deemed problematic: extreme views are not just things that need to be rejected, but also things that need to be understood and tamed so that their weaknesses can be identified. In Lipman’s democracy, political opponents are not seen as enemies that need to be refuted, but as an opportunity to think.

It should be noted that this habitus of inclusion and co-construction is also sought for in Dewey’s democratic theory. Not only does the pragmatic author attach a great importance to the community and to face-to-face exchanges, he also sees dialogue as an essential feature of democratic citizenship. In “Creative Democracy - The Task Before us,” (Dewey, 1939) he writes the following lines:

A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other […]. To cooperate by giving differences a chance to show themselves because of the belief that the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one's own life-experience, is inherent in the democratic personal way of life.

We can see strong echoes to what has just been described in Dewey’s idea that democracy is inextricably linked to a world of exchange where speech is evenly distributed and where the confrontation of opposing viewpoints is seen as an opportunity rather than as a struggle. However, if Dewey presents these dispositions as desirable, he does not really develop this dimension of habitus in his pedagogy. Participating in a common activity encourages a tendency to cooperation and kindness, but it is not enough to develop a habitus of inclusion. It rather requires repeating efforts in that direction and internalizing the potential value of dialogue - something that Dewey does not mention in his own pedagogy. In this regard, the features of inclusion and co-construction are specific to the Lipmanian habitus.

3) a tendency to expression and creativity: the very form of Lipmanian inquiry - spoken dialogue - gets young people used to speaking up but also to being proud of the originality of their contributions. Indeed, the teacher encourages young people to come up with a thinking of their own without settling for the dominant narrative and repeating it. In Lipman’s perspective, philosophical dialogue is a creative process (and not only a process of synthesis or argumentation), which implies imagining other perspectives on one question, or possible counter-arguments or counter-examples that could question a proposition. On the democratic level, this practical habit of oral expression implies that citizens will tend to express their judgment on institutions in public discussions. Lipman’s pedagogy also generates a creative citizenship: as in Deweyan democracy, citizens must be imaginative to suggest new paths to follow in order to correct institutions, but also to imagine the positions and arguments of other members of society, and, in a sense, put themselves in their opponents’ place. However, the creativity developed by the Lipmanian educational program differs from Dewey’s: the point is not so much to imagine concrete institutional devices, as to imagine new options regarding ideals at the core of democratic society. In this perspective, one could say that P4C promotes an habitus of craftsmanship of values, to use Lipman’s words (Lipman, 1988), not only because young people get used to evaluate moral theories according to explicit criteria, but also because philosophical dialogue implies rethinking continuously ethical concepts and renewing their signification.

conclusion

Comparing Dewey’s and Lipman’s pedagogies through the lens of habitus clearly highlights the difference between the democratic models they seek: collective experimentation for the former, and a dialogue-structured, self-corrective society for the latter. I have thus tried to shed a new light on the tensions that exist between Dewey’s and Lipman’s texts. One can identify two tendencies among the commentators who take these pedagogical differences seriously - who see them as potentially problematic, in other words. Some see Dewey’s pedagogy as incomplete or insufficient. That is the case of Oliverio, for instance, who believes that the pragmatist has not included philosophy in his curriculum due to a certain conception of philosophy inherited from Hegel (philosophy would not be accessible to children because it demands a preliminary familiarization with one’s culture), while, to a certain extent, Lipman is able to compensate this flaw (Oliverio, 2012). Others consider that these differences result in Lipman’s poor application of Dewey’s principles. That is what Bleazby seems to suggest when she argues that Philosophy for Children fails to rebuild the theory/practice dualism, and when she proposes to start putting philosophical judgments into practice by carrying out social reconstruction services in order to correct this error (Bleazby, 2007). I try here to propose a third path by presenting these two educational systems as equally valid and fruitful, and as embodying two options which, although they are not diametrically opposed, are nonetheless sufficiently different to point to distinct political models.

In this article, I have also tried to demonstrate how fruitful it can be to use a method of comparison through the notion of habitus in the educational field. First, it helps underline civic issues in pedagogical practices that are supposedly apolitical. The underlying assumption is that all pedagogical models are inherently political - not in the sense that a partisan or ideological agenda may always be lying hidden behind overt intentions, but rather in the sense that training individuals always goes hand in hand with training citizens. Second, this method helps identify potential discrepancies between what a given pedagogy seeks to accomplish - open-mindedness and autonomy, for instance - and what is really accomplishes - habits of passive learning during lectures, for example. Finally, this method of analysis paves the way for further research. Today, there are many schools of P4C that differ from the Lipman-Sharp approach. More or less visibly, each of these methods of philosophical practice with children potentially corresponds to a distinct democratic model, considering it anchors specific habits in the children’s minds. In that regard, what I have presented of Lipman’s democratic model is merely an outline that can be reproduced and modulated in many different ways.

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Received: November 02, 2020; Accepted: January 05, 2021

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