Steve Hoggins, another longstanding TPF specialist tackles David's and Pete's arguments on teaching critical thinking in the classroom, offering an alternative suggestion for a 'curious' way of thinking that seeks to straddle the potential divide between increasing confidence and building the child's capacity to withstand critical challenges.

David Birch, a longstanding TPF philosophy specialist offers his thoughts on why it may be the case that teaching critical thinking in schools can go sour.  He suggests the most important thing is to replace the commonplace non-thinking happening in our classrooms with a positive form of thinking.  He advocates an idea of 'confident thinking' rather than 'critical thinking' as he sees how it can have a negative impact on young learners.

We took our group of Young Philosophers on their first trip of 2016-17 to conduct some philosophical explorations around London Bridge.  We went to City Hall and the nearby Unicorn Theatre to watch a play called 'Baddies: The Musical'.  How do you know if you're a good person?  Is it OK to be bad in some people's eyes?  We continue to wonder...

Pete offers some practical advice on how to use dialogues to do philosophy with children.  Utilising plays written with philosophy in mind by Paul Bodin, Tim Sprod and others he provides some comments on how this medium can act as a catalyst for enquiry and philosophical discussions.  You can find some examples of plays by following the links in the blog.  You will need to become a member of our website to see them - which you can do for free by clicking the link here: https://www.philosophy-foundation.org/become-a-member