Philosophy across the Curriculum

Who am I? Why am I here? Where did my other sock go? It’s not just about tackling the big questions, philosophy can help teachers and students in all subjects, says Peter Worley...

Question: what happens when your experience of the world doesn’t fit with your understanding of it? This is how I define a philosophical problem, and children experience them in their lives every day. So, for example, a child may understand time to be constant, as clocks run at a steady speed, but they can experience time as fluctuating, hence phrases such as ‘time flies when you’re having fun!’.

Among other things, the job of education is to provide children with the tools to help them tackle problems they are likely to encounter in their lives. This is why philosophy in school can be a hugely valuable exercise.

How will philosophy help the children in my class?
Philosophy is centrally concerned with concepts, the basic ideas and notions that lie behind our words and thoughts. So, conceptual understanding is key for children to successfully navigate new topics of learning. For example, you need a grasp of relational concepts to understand how words such ‘big’, ‘small’ or ‘longer’ work.

Philosophy gives teachers an opportunity to observe and assess their class’ understanding of the concepts involved in any given module. You can use philosophy in this way by running a session before a teaching module to diagnose each pupil’s conceptual understanding. Then run another either during and/or after to assess conceptual application. Here are five philosophical thought adventures to get you started.

1. The incredible shrinking machine

Thinking about the tiny and unseen

This playful exercise will require children to use their imagination and stretch their thinking to the limit.
1. There is a machine (use a chair) that shrinks things.
2. Ask the children to imagine that they are the subject of an experiment to shrink a human being.
3. Have them choose a size to be shrunk to.
4. Shrink them!
5. When it comes time to stop shrinking them, the machine malfunctions.
6. They keep shrinking!
7. Now ask them: what’s going to happen?

Task question: Can something be so small that it no longer exists? (Thanks to eight-year-old Alice for this question)

2. Poles apart

Thinking about opposites

Opposites are puzzling. At first it seems that they must be very different, but then, they must also be similar. The Ancient Greeks called this ‘the compresence of opposites’.

1. Have the class stand up in a circle.
2. Say the following words, and have them shout out, all together, the opposites:
◦ Light
◦ Heavy
◦ Now
◦ Me
◦ Everything
◦ Top
◦ Beauty
◦ Three
◦ Is
◦ Zero
◦ Different
◦ Sea
◦ (Plus any other words you think would be interesting)
3. Use their answers as talking points.
4. Ask the class, do all the words have opposites?

Task question: What do you understand an opposite to be?

3. Is this a poem?

Thinking about what constitutes art

The key thing with this exercise is to structure your questioning in the right way. Display the text below along with its title, ‘Is this a Poem?’. Ask the class to read it and answer the titular question.  Once you have your initial ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses, follow up by asking ‘Why?’ or ‘Why not?’ If children say that it isn’t a poem, ask ‘What is a poem?’ For those who say that it isn’t a poem, ask them to ‘correct’ the original. For example, if they say, ‘it needs another line,’ have them write another line, then say, ‘So, is this a poem?’, and so on.

Is This a Poem?

Is
This
A
Poem?

Task question: What is a poem?

4. Money matters

Thinking about the value of currency

We all think we know what money is, that is until we actually consider it in more depth. If you look, you’ll see that paper money is just a ‘promise to pay the bearer the sum of…’ So, if the paper isn’t the payment itself, then what is? It’s a great discussion. For this exercise, place on the floor a real £5 note, a piece of paper with ‘£5’ written on it, and, if you have one, a toy £5 note. Ask the class if the pieces of paper are worth the same and, if not, why.

Now, place two pieces of paper on the floor, one with ‘5’ written on it and the other with ’10’ written on it. Ask, ‘are these pieces of paper worth the same?’ and run through the same follow-up questions above.

This can lead to questions such as what gives money its worth, and ‘what is money’?

Task question: Are these pieces of paper worth the same?

5. Identity crisis

Thinking about sets and classes

This is related to the well-known philosophical thought experiment The Ship of Theseus, in which a ship’s parts are replaced gradually over time, leaving us with the puzzle of whether it is the same ship or not. And at what point does the ship change? After the first changed part? The last? Or the halfway point? In philosophy this is known as the problem of ‘vagueness’.

1. Have your class stand in two circles or two lines opposite one another.
2. Name one group ‘Group A’ and the other ‘Group B’.
3. Ask everyone to give a ‘thumbs up’ and say to change to a ‘thumbs down’ once they think their group is no longer the same group.
4. Tap one child from each group on the shoulder and have the two swap places, joining the other group.
5. Tap another two children and have them do the same.
6. Carry on in this way until all the children have swapped groups.

Ask the children at what point they changed to a thumbs down and why. Similarly, if they stuck with a thumbs up, what was their thinking? Which line is now Group A and which line is Group B?

Task question: Can change occur without loss of identity?

About the author

Peter Worley is the CEO The Philosophy Foundation (philosophy-foundation.org) and the award-winning author of six books on P4C. His latest is 40 lessons to get children thinking (Bloomsbury) from which this article has been adapted.