“We should select young people who shine in philosophy and who would not otherwise get to see certain places and have those opportunities; then we take them there and give them those opportunities, as philosophers”.

Inspired by these words (or something pretty close to them), the impact of The Philosophy Foundation’s (TPF) World Philosophy Day activities and mindful of the lack of experiences and opportunities that many children we work with have, we set up the ‘Young Philosophers’ programme. 

Reasoning and Problem Solving

When the new Australian curriculum goes live in 2015, teachers across the country are being asked to – among other things – get students thinking mathematically. Two of the four proficiency strands are Problem Solving and Reasoning, (the others being Understanding and Fluency).

When I told people that my work with philosophy for children had moved me into mathematics for children, and how we teach it, a lot of them were surprised. They are still surprised when I insist that philosophy and maths are closely related. For many, those two subjects would seem opposite ends of the spectrum: at one end is cold hard mathematics with its truths set in stone, and the other is philosophy, as vague and elusive as a puff of smoke. But this is to misunderstand them both.

Some people like Maths because it feels like a land of certainty. Where other subjects – indeed life in general – teem with doubts and contradictions, numbers are cool, hard and permanent. You know where you are with them.

But is this how numbers really are, or just how we want them to be?