the present and future of doing philosophy with children: practical philosophy and addressing children and young people’s status in a complex world

We can be certain that the future is somewhat uncertain. In so saying, considering the present and future of PwC is an interesting task. It is generally agreed by the Philosophy with Children (PwC) community, that introducing children and young people to philosophical dialogue is a good thing. Arguments abound as to why this is the case, including those that it promotes critical thinking, citizenship, empathy, self-regulation, academic attainment, and so on. However, if, as ^{Kennedy (2010}) asks, “children will inhabit a world that their parents can only imagine, how can adults prepare them for it?” (p. 72). Parents, of course, are not the only adults imagining a possible future for children, others directly in their lives, such as grandparents, teachers, doctors, also imagine, as do those more tangentially related, like politicians, academics, journalists. Questions need to be asked about the relationship between adults and children in the future of PwC.

In the last year alone, we have seen a rise in popularity of ultra-right wing politics internationally; Haiti is under the control of gangs terrorising the population¹; a sizeable number of Donald Trump sympathisers stormed the Capitol in Washington DC in January; and a group of extremists has been plotting a coup in Germany². These are events that people may not have been able to predict, but even the things that can be predicted such as advancing climate change, loss of biodiversity, economic downturns, new strains of Coronavirus and even volcanic eruptions, are, in their own ways, uncertain. Children, though, need to be prepared to confront uncertainties, and it is arguably adults’ responsibility to do so given their experience in the world and the status they hold. However, this may be setting up a false notion that adults should be the ones determining the future for children, even in Philosophy with Children (PwC).

In 2007 UNESCO published its report Philosophy: A School for Freedom. The message was clear, that by training free, reflective minds capable of resisting various forms of propaganda, fanaticism, exclusion and intolerance, philosophical education contributes to peace and prepares everyone to shoulder responsibilities in the face of the great challenges of the contemporary world, particularly in the field of ethics (p.240). There is a tension. ^{Kennedy (2010}) proposes that adults need to consider the future children may confront, while UNESCO suggests we all have responsibilities to bear in facing down the types of behaviour and attitudes that suggest fanaticism, intolerance, propaganda, and so on. Kennedy is correct to suggest that as adults we can only imagine a possible future, but that we perhaps have a responsibility to do so. ^{Jessop (2018}), though, cautions us against putting children on the “ideological front line. As signifiers of a specific version of the future, they become child-soldiers for that vision” (p.453). She is clear that children are often seen as saviours, the saviours of the world we may never inhabit, the idealised or mythical world to which Kennedy refers and that belongs to adults’ imaginings (^{Cassidy, 2021}). This is where the challenge for PwC lies in considering its present and future.

Adults tend to look to children with hope and educate accordingly. This is an idea that ^{Lewis and Jasinski (2022}) consider flawed because, in focusing on hope, education is future-orientated and fails to direct attention to the present. This is challenging for two reasons. Firstly, those who are currently children, all things going well, will be present in the future, where we (adults) will not. Secondly, children’s status in society is somewhat diminished, so they tend not to be involved in imagining tomorrow. Aside from anything else, when children of the present move into the future, they will be adults, thereby perpetuating the binary divide so evident in society as it currently is. The binary adult/child divide persists because structures dictate that this is so (^{Kennedy, 2007}; ^{Cassidy and Mohr Lone, 2020}). Children have rights, of course, but their visibility in society is not as conspicuous or as participatory as that of adults. They have little influence over the realms in which they exist; the structures that establish this binary are created by adults. These structures are hierarchical and situate children at the bottom of that hierarchy, with little opportunity for this to be challenged by children.

John ^{Wall (2010}, 2011, 2019) advocates that society needs to be (re)structured in such a way that takes account of children and that enables children to have influence in that (re)structuring. The adult/child binary allows adult privilege to exist, and that privilege tends to be how the future is shaped. Adults generally set school curricula, and this is based on what is often, these days, referred to as ‘skills for the future’ or ‘twenty-first century skills’. Indeed, in Scotland, Developing the Young Workforce (https://www.dyw.scot/) is a policy in schools and early years settings that readies children, from the earliest stages of their formal education, for the time when they will contribute their labour to society. Geisinger (2017) and van Manen (2012) argue that it is adults who determine what children will become, and this is often dictated by adults’ interests, which can be seen in the likes of various international education policies. This is not to say that adults are always wrong in how they imagine the future. What is at issue is that adults seem to determine that future. What is proposed in this article, is that children may be included in the imagining, and that they may imagine this through engaging in philosophical dialogue. Going further, they may not simply imagine the future through their philosophical endeavours, these dialogues may shape it.

Children as networked

^{Spyrou (2019}) is clear that children should be recognised as networked. They are not bounded, individual, atomistic entities, cut off from the world around them. They are a networked, “multiplicity of becomings in which all are incomplete and dependent” (^{Prout, 2011}, p.8). This may be said for all of us, and it is increasingly the view adopted within the field of childhood studies, in which we are discouraged to reflect on or seek the essence of child or childhood and, instead, focus on “children’s relational encounters with the world” (^{Spyrou, Rosen & Cook, 2019}, p.7). To do otherwise may be seen to limit the scope for children’s agency as it perpetuates the narrative of children as becomings or adults-in-waiting who are then able to participate in society (^{Cassidy & Mohr Lone, 2020}; ^{Kennedy, 2006}; ^{Cassidy, 2007}; ^{Stables, 2008}). If children are to be included in the formation of the present and future society “the theoretical possibility of agency” must be recognised, argues ^{Griffiths (2008}, p.7).

A more networked understanding of children - and adults - is likely to be conducive to a view where power is shared between adults and children. ^{Arnott and Wall, K. (2022}), in advancing notions of young children’s voice, emphasise that power should not be an all-sum game; it is not that adults have all the power and children have none, and vice versa. Rather, having power is a shared experience and it can ebb and flow between different parties at different times. This acknowledges children as agentic and offers possibilities for shared encounters. In order to accept that such encounters are possible and welcome, one has to recognise one’s positionality within various cultural, economic, social and political networks (^{Reed-Sandoval & Sykes, 2017}). In reflecting on children’s place and status within society, and in seeking opportunities for them to imagine and shape the future, our - adult - positionality may be troubled, something the Wall, J. (2010) and ^{Sundhall (2017}) would advocate. Further, children may need to be supported to consider their positionality as they may generally not question the status quo where adults determine the shape of things and the shape of things to come. In thus supporting, we need to be conscious of how we position ourselves and children in that context. We even have to acknowledge that some children may not wish to bear the responsibility of shaping the future, but this would be a choice afforded to them, made harder, perhaps, by their understanding that they are not permitted to participate until they are adults, as shown in Magill, Scholten, Blevins and Smith’s study (2022). Indeed, some of Magill et al’s participants went beyond saying they were unsure they were able to participate before adulthood; they reported feeling somewhat over-whelmed at the prospect of “perpetual civic acting” (p.15). This is worth bearing in mind, alongside ^{Jessop’s (2018}) warning of burdening children with adult priorities. That said, what is proposed, here, is not that children determine the future but that they are involved in imagining and growing the future they, as adults, and future children will inhabit.

Shared humanity

^{Magill, et al. (2022}) recognise that there are opportunities to create a “collective construction of civic culture” (p.2). Central to this, and to a collaborative imagining of possible futures is the notion of a shared humanity. This human connection, says ^{Zembylas (2013}), is necessary, where children’s as much as adults’ humanity is recognised. In a similar way, ^{Splitter (2022}), in writing about identity, stresses the need to avoid an ‘us-them’ mentality and to consider ourselves as ‘one among others’. He also explores the notion of “relational networks among persons (and others) over both more collectivist and more atomistic conceptions of who we are” (p.34). This is particularly interesting as very often children are seen either as atomistic, non-agentic individuals, separate and distinct from others, while, at the same time, they are an homogenous group. Splitter warns against seeing identity on the basis of the group(s) to which one may subscribe based, for example, on one’s race, gender, sexual preferences, and so on. Children are often categorised as a group or tribe. On occasion, the designations of race, religion, gender, and the like, come to the fore depending on the issue under consideration, but the question of who they are in and of themselves, their personal identity, is often not countenanced. Splitter notes that “If our very identities were given by these collectives and institutions with which we identify, then we are affected by - indeed, infected with - all the fragmentation, impermanence, conflict and bitterness… that are part and parcel of our shifting and unstable relationships with these collectives” (p.27). The ‘we’ in Splitter’s discussion appears to be adults. If this is so, how much more his concern affects children. Children are identified by and with institutions, families and schools, for example. In so doing, their identities remain stunted. Of course, there is the pluralisation of childhood (childhoods) to ensure that the many and varied experiences of children are taken into account (^{James & James, 2004}), but they are still identified as a group. In advancing a sense of ‘one among others’, age need not be the determining characteristic around which our participation may be enacted.

^{Splitter’s (2022}) notion of ‘Principle of Personal Worth’ (PPW) may be useful in thinking about children’s status in society. PPW “relies on a clear distinction between persons and groups” (^{Splitter, 2022}, p.30), and asserts that those who constitute collectives such as religion, cultures, institutions, gangs, and so on, should not have a lesser moral status than those collectives. This would suggest, then, that individual children are not lesser than the institutions or groups to which they belong, schools, families, churches, and even the collective that is the set of all children. Recognising the personal worth of children as persons in their own right (^{Cassidy, 2007}) allows us (all) to engage outwith the confines of institutions or collectives and to focus on the ideas or values we wish to advance in shaping the world in which we live and may live in the future. This is not to promote an individualistic approach to developing society where everyone is out for him/herself, but that the inherent worth of us all as individuals is recognised and that we have a shared humanity that can be cultivated for the good.

In recognising our shared humanity, there is scope for compassionate action (^{Cassidy, 2021}). Shared humanity, as ^{Zembylas (2013}) would have it, leads to an ethics of compassion. Under such a way of being among others, we reach beyond what may be seen as “passive empathy” (^{Schertz, 2007}) where the cognitive and affective collide to move towards action. ^{Gibson and Cook-Sather (2020}) would take the idea of compassion further to advance the need for “politicised compassion”, which is “a political position that encourages practical action framed within the wider critical work of social justice and equality” (p.21). The world where considerations of social justice and judgement are conjoined, is one that provokes action, and that action is compassionate in nature (^{Cassidy, 2021}). It is important, however, to consider how compassionate action may be fostered.

Fostering community of philosophical inquiry

The collective that is children are usually placed in institutions called schools for a substantial period of their lives. Within such institutions, adults engage with them, according to ^{Biesta (2015}), for three purposes: socialisation, subjectification, and qualification. Certainly, these elements are in place in schools, and they swing and range in emphasis over the course of children’s life in school. They are, though, determined by teachers, that is to say, adults. In challenging this, it is not to undermine teachers’ professional expertise, but in the context, the child is not overly evident other than as a subject of the educational experiment, the adult vision of and for the future. In many ways, it is convenient that children are in schools, particularly if it is seen as a place to induct them into the ‘real world’. The issue, though, is what that ‘real world’ is and the extent to which that imagined ‘real world’ belongs to adults. ^{Splitter (2022}) posits that a community of inquiry sits “In contrast to many real-world communities which function along more narrow tribal lines” (p.32).

The notion of community is evidently central to the community of inquiry or community of philosophical inquiry. Community is arguably not the same as society. While both are structured to a greater or lesser extent, community suggests a togetherness, a shared interest that perhaps society does not. Although Splitter has concerns about the collective in relation to recognising identity, the collective that is community, acknowledges the individual as ‘one among others’. Splitter asserts that as human persons we are able to ask moral questions, questions of how we might live our lives. We are, he says, rational, reflective and agentic; three characteristics often not ascribed to children (^{Matthews, 2006}; ^{Cassidy, 2007}; ^{Kennedy, 2010}; ^{Tisdall & Punch, 2012}; Cassidy & Mohr Lone, 2020), resulting in children often not being considered persons at all (^{Cassidy, 2007}). Personhood is relational, and if, as suggested above, we wish to consider ourselves in-relation and as networked, then this seems to include children who are, after all, part of the world in which we live (^{Biesta, Lawy & Kelly, 2009}). Perhaps the institution that is school may be helpful in supporting children’s personhood. It could offer the conditions that afford children the opportunity to be reflective and rational with a view to enacting their agency in the wider world. It may be where they practise the sense of community that is to be fostered in the ‘real world’, the world beyond the schoolyard, the world where they exist in-relation with others and where they are recognised by others, notably adult others.

Children in society

^{Gregg (2016}) advocates for “better civic-educated citizens” (p.130) in order that they are better able to work towards the common good. This resonates somewhat with Schultz and Guimaraes-Iosif (2012) who argue that emancipated citizens promote democracy, founded on “critical thinking and the ability to act collectively” (p.242). There are at least three problems here when considering children’s imagining the world and their participation in-relation. In the first instance, citizenship is a legal status that is not afforded to all persons in a particular society. Children are even less likely to be described as citizens given the structures in place that do not allow them to act in the ways adult citizens do. Secondly, children rarely have the opportunity to act collectively, though there are notable exceptions such as school children’s climate change strikes or rallies as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Generally, though, collective action is neither encouraged nor supported (by adults) for children, and opportunities to be seen as networked members of the ‘real world’ who may have something to contribute to the moral discussions driving us forward are few. Thirdly, those who stormed the Capitol in Washington DC, and those plotting the German coup, are emancipated to the extent that they have lives in which they can make their views heard, they are not held in bondage, and they enjoy many civil, political and economic rights. Indeed, as civic education is a feature in countries such as the USA, it cannot be assumed that those who are better civic-educated will be better at promoting human rights within their society, as Gregg (2016) would have it, or that democracy is more likely to flourish, as evidenced by the behaviour of those on the 6^th January. The key, as Schultz and Guimaraes-Iosif say, is that “critical thinking and the ability to act collectively” have to be central to nurturing democracy, to the imagining of a world where we exist as networked persons who recognise the PPW of others, while seeking the common good.

This leads back to the notion of community, and, beyond that, to community of philosophical inquiry. ^{Saner (2022}) proposes that engaging in Philosophy for Children (PwC) (^{Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980}; ^{Lipman, 2003}) “puts into practice basic assumptions of civil engagement and facilitate[s] a dialogue on ideas relevant and significant for the participants” (p.70). Saner (2022) sees PwC as a “trial run and praxis of civil society” (p.83). This is somewhat problematic as it fails to recognise children as part of civil society; it perpetuates the sense that children are not yet members of society, that they are not ‘one among others’ but that they are ‘other’, separate and distinct from those making decisions about how we live our lives and how we might imagine a possible future. Although she suggests that children should “experience themselves as equal partners in the dialogue; as long as they are listened to and know that they are heard” (p.84), this fails to account for a world in which children are, or may be, agentic, social actors. There is a danger of tokenism if children only have the illusion of participation, if they do not see and experience themselves as partners in dialogue, that their views may carry weight and influence decisions (^{Lundy, 2007}, 2018). Saner (2022) is, however, correct to suggest that a shift from ‘I-them’ to ‘I-you’ is required. She posits that this move is required for children and is experienced as they become more practised in PwC and as they shift from thinking about “abstract, theoretical others” to “concrete others [who are] active, mutual, face-to-face conversation partners” (p.77). It is certainly important that children see themselves as ‘one among others’, as networked, and that they are supported to seeing and experiencing this. Where Saner may be mistaken is that she seems to suggest this only for children. The shift to recognising the ‘you’ rather than the ‘them’ in forming community is required of adults, where adults speak of their relationship with children as ‘I-you’ rather than ‘I-them’, where the set of people that are children are othered. This is not to suggest that Saner is wrong in suggesting children may require some support that community of philosophical inquiry may afford to recognise and understand the relationship, but unless adults also engage with ‘I-you’ with respect to children, the systems and structures that minimise and limit children in the world and how the future may be imagined remains. Assuming, as Saner does, “equality of capacity and value of contributions” (p.77) is a strong starting point.

Children in dialogue

This starting point accepts that adults have had epistemic privilege and that children often experience epistemic injustice, where what they say is not countenanced or taken seriously (^{Kennedy, 2010}; ^{Murris, 2013}; ^{Mohr Lone & Burroughs, 2016}; ^{Cassidy & Mohr, 2020}). Dialogue is central to recognising what children have to say and to the practice of PwC. It is in this that we might consider the ways in which the ‘I-you’, ‘one among others’, children as imaginers of the future may be taken forward with a view to ensuring they are recognised in-relation with one another and adults. ^{Magill et al. (2022}) see dialogue as vital in establishing a shared community. Where they are perhaps a little misguided is in their suggestion that unless dialogue is established, we will fail in an endeavour to build consensus. It need not be the case that either consensus is built or that the endeavour fails. As dialogue within PwC shows, disagreement is important and even welcome. Of course, we wish to co-exist comfortably, but seeking consensus may be problematic. Without disagreement, we do not move forward. The sense that imagining a possible future can be built on consensus is difficult. We are unlikely, even, to reach a consensus that children should be involved in imagining a possible future, but that does not mean those that adhere to such a view stop engaging with those who do not, or that the view is wrong-headed. The model presented by PwC is a helpful one in showing that dialogue is a collaborative endeavour. Participants in the community of philosophical inquiry work together to create shared meaning, though not necessarily agreement (Cassidy, 2007). Community of philosophical inquiry affords participants the space to explore ideas of immediate interest and those that are challenging.

PwC is one approach that might support deliberative democracy, where people come together to think together with a view to ensuring a ‘real world’ that is good for all (^{Cassidy, 2017}; ^{Burgh & Thornton, 2022}). While it is generally facilitated by an adult, the power balance shifts somewhat in the dialogue. There are different approaches to PwC, but they have in common the view that the children direct the dialogue. The facilitator may intervene or pose questions, but generally s/he will not offer her/his own view. S/he is there to challenge the community’s philosophical thinking, and the dialogue belongs to the community of participants. This shift in teacher-pupil, adult-child dynamic is different to the usual pattern seen in classrooms (^{Robinson, 2011}). Dialogic participation provides opportunities for ideas to be raised and challenged; for connections to be made between what has been read, heard and experienced; for thinking for oneself; and to participate beyond the tokenism that often happens when children are invited to express a view (^{Cassidy, 2017}). Note, that they are usually invited; opportunities for child-initiated dialogic participation beyond the school are limited.

The study conducted by ^{Magill et al. (2022}) into an “action civics summer camp” experience for young people to support community agency and engagement were keen to find a framework that might help the young people to “work through the challenges and uncertainties of real and perpetual civic engagement beyond the camp” (p. 10). The success of the camp was varied, with some participants not engaging in their communities after the life of the camp. What was clear, however, was the value that the young people placed on dialogue. The camp brought together young people from different backgrounds, and the research team recognised the importance of connecting across differences. Offering community of philosophical inquiry as the framework Magill and his colleagues were seeking, presents fertile ground for bringing together those of different backgrounds to engage in an activity that is “dialogic, intellectual and collaborative… and could benefit the common good” (ibid., p.11). Indeed, PwC presents opportunities to explore what might be considered the ‘common good’ now and in the future.

Children and difference

Difference in PwC is exhibited beyond the demographic, the collective, to which the participants belong. Difference in views is sustaining to the dialogue and to generating understanding. Disagreement is, as suggested above, important. In proposing PwC as an approach to ensure children are included in the imagining of tomorrow, challenging or controversial topics cannot be avoided. ^{Zembylas (2013}) encourages that “talking across differences” is “mutually humanizing” (p.17). In exploring issues that are challenging within society, the community is arguably stronger. It allows individuals to see themselves as ‘one among others’ and to recognise the relationships within the networks in and through which they live. ^{Chetty and Suissa (2017}) query whether the community of inquiry, due an absence of diversity, is presented as an ideal community, and that community may be considered ‘gated’. They advocate for what ^{Boler (1999}) describes as a pedagogy of discomfort and urge that this is embraced to ensure that there are no ‘no go areas’ in PwC. PwC cannot be proposed as a model through which the future may be shaped with children if there are topics that cannot be discussed or that are ignored. This runs alongside ^{Saner’s (2022}) suggestion that public policies and public institutions should be carefully scrutinised. Involving children in dialogue that scrutinises what they see and hear, that reflects upon the common good, and that has the goal of imagining the future through PwC is an important step in elevating children’s status and in shaping that future.

A shared vision for wider society, one in which the common good, or the good life, reaches beyond the subjective is important (^{Fenner, 2007}). ^{Sharp (1995}) promises “a qualitatively different life” (p.55) if we engage with the transformative potential of dialogue with children. Ideally, if children are able to draw the conclusion, through inquiring together, that others should be valued as persons rather than receiving “unquestionable dogma”, they are likely to embrace this in their lives and it will be manifest through their behaviour (^{Sharp, 1984}, p.7). An important challenge for the teacher, the adult, when facilitating PwC is in ensuring that s/he allows the dialogue to come from the children and to go in directions that may seem controversial. Any reticence on the part of the teacher may be due to anxiety on her/his part, as adult, that the dialogue may induce upset or that the children may be mistaken or incorrect in their understanding of things or that conflict may arise with parents. There is, of course, a pedagogical responsibility that children do not leave one’s classroom with false or incorrect information. There is much that may be mistaken in children’s general knowledge pertaining to science or history, for example, but this is easily remedied through discussion and subsequent activities designed to address the misunderstanding.

The suggestion is not that the teacher is entirely absent. In the way that learning is scaffolded in many classrooms, the same is true of the learning that occurs in philosophical inquiry. While acknowledging that the development of democracy is a goal of PwC (^{Lipman, 2003}), care should be taken that the adult facilitating the dialogue does not stray into manipulating the dialogue to ensure children arrive at desirable ends. Of course, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the like are reprehensible, and one would hope that, as ^{Sharp (1995}) advocates, through inquiry children will come to recognise that the views and behaviour associated with these are unacceptable. There is perhaps a tension between what might be considered indoctrination and what is careful facilitation. Teachers have a pedagogical responsibility to set right children’s misunderstanding about mathematics or science, for example, but it is not simply pedagogical responsibility that is required to disabuse participants of conclusions they may draw that are abhorrent. It is one’s responsibility as a person, as ‘one among others’ who seeks the best possible ‘real world’ now and in the future. ^{Saner (2022}) points us to praxis, noting that this is what is sought through PwC rather than indoctrination. She pushes us to consider the need for self-understanding and that this demands that we make “explicit the established and evolving conditions of social togetherness” (p.75). This, surely, must involve children as the evolving conditions do so in conversation with children’s interactions with them.

It is through fostering good judgement that children - and adults - may come to appreciate the common good. ^{Magill et al. (2022}) caution against “civic hegemony” (p.8) and advocate that children are encouraged to reflect on the epistemological and ontological norms evidenced in society. Crucially, what is not discussed is that civic hegemony tends to be dominated by adult views. Unless children are included in the discourses around which civil society is built, and as it may be, there will be no shift. Good judgement may certainly be nurtured in children, and perhaps the most convenient place to do this is within the school since this is where they spend much of their time. Beyond this, though, in school, they are able to engage with their peers to practise their reasoning and judgement, where pedagogically responsible teachers have the space, time, motivation and skills to nurture and model this judgement for and among the children. The school can be a site of indoctrination, but it may also be a setting in which good judgement may be fostered through philosophical dialogue. ^{Garside (2013}) tells us that PwC “should facilitate the formation of judgement as a way of engaging with the world and self” (p.146). This judgement in the form of careful deliberation, may support individuals to consider possible courses of action (^{Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009}). Sharp, one of the founders of the PwC movement, in her interview with Maughn Gregory, discusses the importance of judgement in relation to how we live our lives. She considers “the art of making judgments that might improve that [everyday] experience… as a quest to help us to lead qualitatively better lives” (Gregory [in conversation with Sharp], 2011, p.200). This quest need not be limited to adults. In fact, in advocating PwC, it is clear that children can also look to what may constitute a good life and an imagined future. This is recognised, too, by ^{Burgh and Thornton (2022}) as they advance their argument that sees “schooling as social reconstruction” (p.190), and where philosophical dialogue plays a key role in this.

Conclusion

The status of children and the relation in which they find themselves with adults in society may not be as emotive or uncomfortable to explore as ideas surrounding race, gender or religion, for instance, but it is worth bearing in mind ^{Splitter’s (2022}) Principle of Personal Worth. Our moral status as individuals is not overtaken by that of the groups to which we may belong, and this should apply to children as individuals rather than as an homogenous group. As persons, regardless of colour, religion, class, age, or any other category that situates us in a group, we have moral worth. In imagining a possible future, a future that is in many ways uncertain aside from the certainty that many of us adults will not experience it, it seems wrong that children are excluded from the imagining ^{Kennedy (2010}) highlights. ^{Burgh and Thornton (2022}) assert the need for “epistemic inclusiveness” (p.191), which surely includes children.

PwC is a collaborative endeavour, where members of the community of philosophical inquiry engage with one another to seek meaning and shared understanding. Such an approach may be useful in thinking about our collective and uncertain future and where the likes of events such as those in Haiti, Germany and the USA highlighted above are avoided. It requires that we acknowledge that we are - all - networked and through these connections see ourselves as ‘one among others’. In seeing children as ‘one among others’, in accepting that they may have something to say and do in shaping our future - their future - one is making an ethical statement. It is ethical because it is about how we behave towards members of our community - children. It is about children’s status, and because it is about elevating children’s status, which challenges the systems and structures as they currently exist and includes them in our common humanity, it is political. Considering the future of Philosophy with Children perhaps requires that we - adults and children - are more overtly political in the ways in which and why we engage with the practice.