Finding the basis for the development and expansion of 'Doing Philosophy' : Focusing on the search for ways to develop children’s philosophy education through the exploration of the nature of ‘Doing Philosophy’

Children’s philosophy education has been known as a type of philosophy. However, it was judged that there was insufficient discussion on why children’s philosophy education should be philosophy, not philosophy. Many philosophers and researchers have already discovered the significance of philosophy in ‘Doing philosophy’, not ‘philosophy’, and have argued that true philosophy education is not about teaching philosophical theories. Instead of discovering specific definitions and conditions of philosophy, the author tried to discover these traits in children’s philosophy after extracting the philosophical characteristics of philosophers’ statements. First of all, this discussion starts with a discussion on thinking ability or thinking ability education. Lipman defines the goal of children’s philosophy education as thinking ability education, and for this purpose, he writes a novelesque philosophy textbook. Philosophy textbooks composed of narratives enable children to improve critical, creative, and caring thinking, and conversely, ‘participation’ in children’s philosophy education is possible through the use of these thinking skills. Next, the writer pays attention to materials for children’s philosophy education. Lipman’s philosophy novel and various philosophical materials used by Matthews for his children’s philosophy education were mentioned. Finally, participation in discussion activities was considered in order to effectively utilize philosophical materials. Lipman and Matthews made it possible for children to participate in discussions for children’s philosophy education. Children share, analyze, criticize, and propose creative alternatives to philosophical materials in such exploratory community activities. In addition, they understand that they have different value standards from their own, understand, and empathize with the other person’s value standards. Through this process, children can acquire not only the development of rational thinking skills but also the improvement of emotional thinking skills. All of these processes allow them to acquire both good children-to-children and children-to-adult relationships between children and children, children and adults, and ultimately, to understand themselves, the world in which they live, and the other living in that world. Of course, all of these processes are possible from the premise that children can directly participate in philosophical activities, and it is judged that understanding this ‘participation’ as another concept that explains ‘philosophy’ will not be a big problem. However, it was not easy to deal in-depth with the search for specific directions for the development of children’s philosophy education in this paper. So, first of all, in this paper, we will pay attention to why children’s philosophy education can be philosophy, and then discuss the direction of its development in-depth in later papers.