ניקול דקוסטרה (בתמונה) היא המתרגמת מאנגלית לצרפתית של ספריו של פרופ' מתיו ליפמן שעוסקים בפילוסופיה עם ילדים. המאמר שלה הוצג בכנס "ילדות ודמוקרטיה" מטעם האגודה האוסטרית לפילוסופיה עם ילדים (ACPC) באוקטובר 2011
Nicole Decostre is the translator of Prof. Matthew Lipman's books into French. Her article
was presented at the ACPC conference (Graz, Austria, October 2011)
LIBERATION OF THE CHILD’S MIND
THROUGH PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN
By Nicole Decostre
Pressure of the family
In the presence of adults, particularly a parent, the child is usually
like a believer in the presence of deities. They seem to him to be omniscient,
almighty, and totally respectable. Who would dare to disobey, to doubt what
they say? Who would dare not to imitate their behavior? A complete and blind
love, the other face of complete dependence, generally overhangs all their
feelings, all their ideas, all situations and even all experiences. It is the
domination of the Absolute. They look like dogs submitting to their master; it
is the very nature of totalitarianism.
Conscious of that status and enforced by it, too many parents reign like
absolute rulers: they take all the decisions during the two or three first
years, those years which will for ever have an enormous influence on the
child’s personality. Of course, some of them are generous, open, clever. But if
it is not the case, what can we hope for the autonomy of the person? How can
you become a person if you live under dictatorship, or if you feel abandoned?
I must add that most of the parents – maybe well-intentioned – consider
it is their right to impose their beliefs, convictions, prejudices, traditions.
The more the community life is primitive and precarious, the more the
constraint will be rigid and the more the possible punishment will be severe.
How is it possible in those conditions to be able to have the temerity to try
to leave those roots? Would it even be possible?
It is the beginning of an horrible and various succession of attacks
against the most elementary human rights: integrity of the body, personal
choice of life, choice of marriage, choice of religion – or of irreligion –
capability to change, to evolve and so on. The most terrible is the cultural imprisonment,
if we can speak of culture when we speak about a ghetto of prejudices, of stiff
customs and traditions, and of intellectual misery.
Many of the children in the world grow up in such a dictatorial
environment. It is not astonishing to see waves of fanaticism, of social and
even familial atrocities, of the impossibility to think well and to live a true
citizenship. Not the citizenship of the institutions, nor that of the right to
vote which is only formal, but a citizenship which is instructed, chosen,
resulting from a true dialogue and of the relativity of values
following the circumstances, open to a possible evolution.
Even considerate or thoughtful parents are rarely conscious that their
beliefs and values are having a detrimental effect on their child’s future
personality. The ideal condition would be that they themselves have fully
conscience how high are the stakes of a democratic education, as it happens in
Matthew Lipman’s works, particularily in Lisa,
Ethical Inquiry that I just translated into French. This would enable them
to expand the intellectual and cultural horizon of the children, by varying the
ideas and the people, by diversifying the experiences of life, by permitting
different authorities to confront themselves, by challenging a multiculturalism
and, most of all, by installing a true and permanent dialogue with their
children, like in Lipman’s Philosophical
Community of Inquiry, which is at the center of his conception of
education.
Courageous parents are required to face a child’s provoking and
challenging questions. This is what Lipman has understood very well. It is the
base and the originality of his program. Adults need to get rid of their
feeling of superiority, and vanity. Their desire to always be right must be
challenged too. They also need to curtail feeling of being the strongest
through the law of strong.
Such stupid egocentrism can be highly destructive; it can lead to
atrocities of which we have enough contemporary examples. Some people act in
the name of the Absolute, without any critical thinking. Their convictions are
not respectable.
By definition, the Absolute is never questioned. A child educated with
such a conception will never acquire nuanced thinking, evolutionary thinking,
nor an ethics which empathies with others, nor will they learn to accept
responsibility for their actions. This means clearly that one of the fundamental
pillars of democracy is absent. It is here that the early application of
Lipman’s philosophical program as soon as possible can save that situation. I
must add that his program is not so easy to apply: people need to understand
his ideas as well as the content of his program. The persons who want to apply
it have to be professionally trained. Furthermore, they must be prepared to
battle against many difficulties and obstacles.
Resistance prepares to autonomy
It is urgent to organize for the youngest children a true resistance
against that Absolute. The ability to resist is indeed necessary at the very
beginning of a community life and, of course, a family life.
Some strong-minded children demonstrate an astonishing capability to
resist, a remarkable temerity and perseverance to run the gauntlet of the
diktats of their parents. But most often, they are broken, sometimes violently.
They also can become dangerous rebels, dramatically anti-social. Conversely,
they can be tied by emotional blackmail or by rewarded conformism.
A reason is that the first dogma of education is obedience, which,
traditionally, is unconditional. Obedience should be accepted, resulting of a
true dialogue. This implies that the authorities (parents, teachers…) renounce
to their absolute power and accept to consider the children’s reasons. The
result would be that the children’s reasonability together with their affectivity
would be enforced, while the adults would give nuances to their opinions, their
judgments and their demands.
If they have been given the opportunity to test their reasoning with the
adults, the children are supposedly more able to find their place in the group
of pairs, while keeping their independence as well as their own personality.
And so, the “Philosophical Community of Inquiry” is already prepared!
For the greatest social and political benefit, those children will never
become the slaves of any group, as is usually the case. It is indeed highly
difficult to resist the intimidations of peer group pressure, which can be
violent and destructive. Remember that in History, exclusion has always been a
punishment to fear.
For the adolescents, the pressure of conformism can be devastating. The
most stupid and harmful behaviors, the most "à la mode" ones, can
lead to innumerable errors, sometimes fatal as we can see every day by world
events.
So, the problem is to learn to evaluate critically the authority, whatever
it is (religious or political). To dare to criticize it, even to try to destroy
it if it is abusive, to accept it only if it has been decided and built in
common, should be a shared goal. Is that not the whole story of Democracy, a
construction patiently built together and willingly shared? This is of course
not possible if the dictatorship is already established.
The problem of truth
To the revealed or imposed Truth, Matthew Lipman opposes, through the
"Philosophical Community of Inquiry", a truth to build together,
always provisional, always perfectible, as consensual as possible. He brings
about the acceptation of the incomplete, of the never totally attained.
Compared to traditional mentalities, and to political or religious
pretentions, Lipman’s program represents a real intellectual revolution,
which constitutes a fundamental pillar of a living Democracy. That
innovative effort, comparable to that of the ethics in science (remember John
Dewey), makes it necessary to break up with fatalism or with laziness of the
mind delighting in the mass conformism or in inaction.
It is why it is fundamental to develop - at the same time- the autonomy
of conscience, a healthy wonder for the world and for mankind, a
self-confidence encouraging adventure and discovery. These conditions will
create a reasonable self-esteem, which, at its turn, is the condition for a
socio-cultural and personal balance, necessary to establish an effective
solidarity.
Active and responsible individualism is the opposite of a socially
destructive individualism, which merely encourages the mentality of the
"mouton de Panurge" following the herd, safety in numbers. By
committing themselves to autonomous thinking, the children become
architects of a world where the truth, patiently elaborated, will be able to
battle against dissembling and of intellectual manipulations: publicity,
propaganda, taboos, ukases or non thoughtful and arbitrarily imposed
traditions.
A true liberation of the mind is impossible without that unfinished
search for truth and without a never attained approach of the world and of the
truth.
Construction of a democratic mind
Nothing is given to Humanity. Everything that has been constructed has
to be preserved, cared for, improved. This is still more the case concerning democracy,
because it is an anti-natural invention, because it is not spontaneous in the
individual or social behavior. Its ethical values are real creations of human
conscience.
Let us take some examples: one of the basis of democracy is the concept
of equality, which is not found in nature where the first law is that of the
jungle: « Eat or be eaten ». The texts published thanks to a humanist
philosophy claim that all people are born with the same rights. But they don’t
seem to be equal in health, in strength, in life expectancy, in beauty, all of
which are very unequally distributed. If that natural injustice has been
somewhat corrected, it is thanks to the conscience.
It is the same concerning the idea of individual freedom. That idea too
is a human invention, a rather fanciful one. « I refuse to believe in
freedom (…) »[1],
declared Einstein as a disciple of Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, some of it can
be embodied in some concrete and precious forms, having to be built and
constantly defended (freedom of speech, freedom of the media, freedom of
assembly and of association, and so on). The idea of solidarity has been
considerably polished, since some animal essays, till it was written in the
institutions of the democratic countries.
A considerable educative effort is necessary to install and to enforce
democracy. The French philosopher Francis Jeanson has spoken of
“citoyennisation"[2].
The will has to be encouraged, states Descartes, and even the "good
will" pointed out by Kant. The creative and caring thinking, that Lipman
wishes to build, is also very necessary.
The whole philosophical program of Matthew Lipman tends to promote a
democratic mind, a mind that is active and responsible. He wants that mind to
be constantly enriched. It can seem a question of common sense. « But the
common sense is constantly corrupted and the responsible are: school, media,
business world, world of politics » says Einstein.[3]
The fundamental and founder critique made by Lipman is not far… The scientist also writes: « Without moral
culture, no chance for humanity. »[4] Lisa, Ethical Inquiry, among others,
tends to demonstrate it.
Like John Dewey, Einstein only considers as scientists « people
whose mind appears as really scientific ».[5]
Likewise, Lipman considers only as democrats those who prove their mind is
really democratic. It is why he cared so much in Mark, Social Inquiry to pursue the tricks, to show the
difficulties, to encourage a persevering and constructive effort. The reason is
that he is truly conscious of the originality, but also of the fragility, of
the democratic project. Moreover, he is aware of the vital and urgent necessity
to guarantee that dignity and fundamental human rights are the basis of
fulfillment and peace.
The educational enterprise discovers then its profound and true sense,
far from the pedagogical acrobatics as well as from encyclopedism. Teachers and
students alike feel that as a release, the former by the pleasure to awake the
minds, and the latter by the discovery of the joy to learn and to know and by
the growing up of their self-esteem. This self-esteem is one of the pillars of
a real citizenship, a guarantee for a democratic life.
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