The Beneficial Effects of Philosophy on Children

A study suggests that teaching philosophy to children produces an improvement in their intelligence.

Philosophy is one of the disciplines most severely damaged by the rise of the productivist mentality. productivist mentalityWhat does not produce added value in a clear and manifest way is despised and relegated to the trunk of useless and confusing elements.

This degradation of the value of philosophy has been seen in a very evident way at the university level, but in compulsory education, the prospects are not particularly propitious.

Philosophy and children

Why invest time and money in promoting a line of knowledge and competence that will be truncated when the time comes for the labor market?

To these sociological arguments must be added psychological ones. It is a widespread idea that a large part of schoolchildren need not benefit from philosophy, since developmental psychology shows the difficulty (or impossibility) of younger children to deal with abstract ideas. difficulty (or impossibility) for the youngest children to deal with abstract ideas..

See Jean Piaget's theory of developmental stages. Of course, studies on the development of brain connectivity (necessary to create abstractions, which are properties shared by the most varied objects) indicate that this is not fully consolidated until the third decade of life. Is it, then, unnecessary to educate the youngest children in critical thinking?

Beyond content, praxis

Recent research suggests that teaching philosophy to children can produce a significant improvement in their level of intelligence.. The study, carried out by Spanish researchers (Roberto Colom, Félix García Moriyón, Carmen Magro, Elena Morilla) and the results of which have been published in Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxisis a longitudinal investigation in which a group of children who were given weekly philosophy classes (455 boys and girls) and a control group who were not given these classes (321 boys and girls) were followed for 10 years, from the age of 6 until the end of secondary school. Both the control group and the treatment group had the same socioeconomic profile and both belonged to students in private schools in the Madrid area.

The results show that the members of the treatment group increased their IQ (general cognitive ability) (general cognitive ability) and 4 and 7 points in and 7 points in fluid and crystallized intelligence, respectively. In addition, philosophy classes with children reduced the accumulation over the years of the number of students in the "at-risk zone" (with relatively low IQ scores), a problem typical of educational institutions. (with relatively low IQ scores), a problem typical of educational institutions.

As for the influence of these sessions on personality traits, the philosophy students from early ages showed a tendency towards extraversion, honesty and emotionality.. These traits could be enhanced, more than by the content of the classes themselves, by the teaching modality that philosophy requires to be taught in classes: the discussion groups, the debate to question preconceived ideas and the continuous proposal of questions. Philosophy with children requires a much more democratic structure of the classes. in which the student is an active subject together with the rest of the classmates and the teacher becomes a facilitator and guide of the student's research (something that fits very well with Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development).

A new paradigm

If we recapitulate, we will see that the particularity of philosophy is not so much the content of these studies, understood as a 'package of information'.understood as a "package of information" that is transmitted unilaterally from the teacher to the students, but rather the role of this discipline as a framework for asking questions and proposing answers, that is to say, elaborating one's own way of seeing the world. This dynamic of questioning does not have to be limited to subjects that cannot be covered by the child's mind, just as sport is important for everyone, regardless of their ability to gain Muscle mass.

Philosophy can constitute in itself a healthy habit and a training for the transcendental questions that will come in later stages of development, as well as offer a space in which to to work on the management of intersubjectivity and understanding with others..