p 4 c 4 adults
I went to a conference last week about using outdoor education as a tool to teach children about social justice. There were interesting ideas about activities to get kids thinking about the effects that their actions have on others around the globe.
Anyway - one of the activities was called philosophy for children (p4c of course). This involved the children (or in this case adult delegates) coming up with philosophical questions to discuss, following an exercise on global inequalities. Lots of questions were suggested covering issues such as how can we encourage global cooperation, how can we develop social justice in an unequal world. However when it came to the vote to decide which question to discuss, the one selected was none of these but instead, 'is it right for people to use outdoor education to promote their belief systems regarding an issue such as social justice'. A good question no doubt. An interesting debate for sure. But it interested me that given a group of people with a belief in social justice, and the opportunity to discuss and maybe even in their own way have some small influence on it we turned in on ourselves and chose instead to discuss whether we had the right to discuss these things. I wondered if amongst socially responsible moral people there would always be this self doubt when positive action is required. Armed with this new philosphical question I wandered off into a corner to have good think about it.
Anyway - one of the activities was called philosophy for children (p4c of course). This involved the children (or in this case adult delegates) coming up with philosophical questions to discuss, following an exercise on global inequalities. Lots of questions were suggested covering issues such as how can we encourage global cooperation, how can we develop social justice in an unequal world. However when it came to the vote to decide which question to discuss, the one selected was none of these but instead, 'is it right for people to use outdoor education to promote their belief systems regarding an issue such as social justice'. A good question no doubt. An interesting debate for sure. But it interested me that given a group of people with a belief in social justice, and the opportunity to discuss and maybe even in their own way have some small influence on it we turned in on ourselves and chose instead to discuss whether we had the right to discuss these things. I wondered if amongst socially responsible moral people there would always be this self doubt when positive action is required. Armed with this new philosphical question I wandered off into a corner to have good think about it.
posted by Anonymous at 10:48 am
1 Comments:
That's a tough one. It's one thing to be reflective about what you're doing, but I think that committee groups of reasonably intelligent people often do veer towards inaction. Possibly the best outcome is to go ahead and actually do something, and THEN fret about it.
Of course, here we are discussing whether it's ok to discuss these types of discussions... Which is a meta-meta-discussion, possibly.
Ugh. That made me feel all queasy-sick.
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