WHEN teaching and learning are reduced to imitation, rote learning, technique, or formula, they go dead. They prevent learning from taking place. Students might be able to reproduce thoughts they’ve learned by heart, but they can’t apply that learning in real life or in places where it is supposed to help. They cannot make learning part of themselves and who they are. This type of ‘dead’ learning is shallow and doesn’t go beyond the surface. Students forget it easily too.
In fact, many students say they forget the material right after exams or once the semester ends.
Movements around the world argue that schools should teach critical thinking, argumentation, debate, and reflection to support deep learning. These are essential skills and abilities that students need to develop. Curricula are designed to facilitate the development of these abilities, but when evaluations are done, we usually find mixed success. What is going wrong? When curricula are reduced to formula-based methods and techniques because teachers care more about getting through the syllabus than ensuring students engage with the learning process, the benefits become limited.
Movements around the world even argue for introducing philosophy in schools. As a subject, philosophy is generally regarded as more appropriate for older children. For the most part, it has been taught in the final years of high school or at the university level. But the Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement argues that philosophy should be introduced to younger students. There are many books on content and pedagogy in this area, and philosophy is taught in many schools.
One argument for introducing philosophy early concerns its content. People have argued that children need to be introduced to ethics and values early. Philosophy is the best way to introduce these issues, discuss them, and help students make more informed decisions. A philosophical discussion on any topic, such as racism,internet access for children, online bullying, tolerance, respect, etc., could encourage students to think about these important topics and make informed choices about who they want to be and why.
An equally important argument for introducing philosophy in schools concerns pedagogy and what students will learn by engaging with it.
Teaching philosophy is directly linked to introducing debate, argumentation, and critical and analytical thinking in classrooms. Students need to acquire and internalise these skills. For those who support this movement, philosophical discussion is an effective way to develop these skills in students.
Of course, there can be critical thinking on any theme it does not require the subject to be from ethics or metaphysics. But since philosophy has a long tradition of debate and critical thinking, and since ethics and values need to be introduced to children, it might be easier to cultivate critical and analytical thinking through philosophy than through mathematics, physics, or languages.
But the key issue is how this is to be done. I have fond memories of my high school physics teacher, who could bring his subject to life by motivating students to approach it with curiosity, questions, and debate. He encouraged us to go deeper with each question and answer, was never impatient when we made mistakes, and was also very open to things he did not know himself. He made physics a joy to study. But in many years of schooling, I had only one such teacher in mathematics and physics, and another in language teaching. The rest and dozens of teachers taught us over 16-odd years of schooling were mostly trying to finish the course and give us the needed techniques and information.
There was not much joy in how they taught and how we learnt.
If anecdote could be evidence, the difference with philosophy teachers was stark. When I stud-ied philosophy at the university level, most of my professors were good at encouraging deep, critical and analytical thinking, allowing time for ambiguity and mistakes, deep learning and very deep engagement with questions. It was pure joy to be part of this experience and benefit from it.
I wish every child could have access to such teachersand teaching.
Does the subject matter then? Maybe it is not the subject itself but how it is taught in our schools that has led to this difference. Most of our teachers teach languages and mathematics, especially the latter, as dead matter-something to be learned by rote, and reproduced. They do not teach it as matter that requires discovery and exploration.
In such cases, introducing philosophy might not work, as even philosophy might be limited to what Plato or Kant said rather than engaging with the subjects they discussed and thought about. Islamiat and Pakistan Studies were introduced in schools here during my student days.
Both subjects were taught as content that needed only to be learnt and reproduced rather than as content requiring debate, critical analysis, and argumentation. We see the result in an almost complete lack of intellectual interest in these subjects among students.
How do we make teaching and learning alive and vibrant? By embracing debate, critical thought, and argumentation; by exposing students to ambiguity, mistakes, and open discussion; by giving them safe spaces to do so.
Unfortunately, all our efforts in education at the school or university level in Pakistan are about content transfer, control, and reproduction. How can good thinking survive or thrive in these conditions? The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Altematives and an associate professor of economics at Lums.