Then, what is children's philosophy, what is the relationship between children's philosophy and picture books, and what kind of picture books are children's philosophy picture books?
What is children+philosophy?
Imagine that when you are walking on the road with your child, he suddenly asks, "Where did these people come from on the road? Will their names be different? " When he saw a flower, he asked, "What if I were a flower?" When he saw the red light, everyone stopped and asked, "Why should everyone obey the traffic rules?" Children's questions often make adults don't know how to answer, but these questions also show that they are full of curiosity about the world. They not only care about what they see, but also try to ask the reasons behind things like philosophers.
German scholar GetrudRitz-Frhlich collected the questions of 1000 pupils in 1990s. Most of these problems involve personal life, existentialism and metaphysics. About 15% of the questions are "meaning questions", such as "Why am I in the world?" "What will happen after death?" "Why are there humans?" "Does God exist?" "Why shouldn't people lie?" Wait a minute. In this sense, children have the potential to do philosophy and are born philosophers.
It is Matthew Lipman, a philosophy professor at Columbia University, who really turned this potential into an educational reform movement and made children's philosophy a research field in education and philosophy. 1970s, he found that the college students around him had problems of logical confusion and difficulty in expression. He was determined to introduce philosophical inquiry into primary and secondary schools, so that children could learn the ability of independent thinking from an early age. He wrote some philosophical novels, hoping that while reading and discussing philosophical novels, children would establish an "inquiry group" that respected and listened to each other, so as to develop creative thinking, critical thinking, caring thinking and cooperative thinking.
From Thinking Stories to Philosophical Picture Books
Then, how does this educational plan of children's philosophy establish a relationship with picture books? This has to start with "thinking about stories". Thinking stories, as the name implies, are popular in Europe and America in recent years, aiming at inspiring children to think philosophically. China society introduced foreign thinking stories and created local thinking stories under the impetus of Taiwan Province Caterpillar Children's Philosophy Foundation. As a supplement to traditional children's philosophy textbooks and philosophical novels, thinking stories have been widely used in children's philosophy courses because they meet children's reading interests. At present, a large number of practitioners have been accumulated in the United States, Britain, Australia and other countries, especially a series of work done by thomas white Wirtenberger, a philosophy professor at Montoyak University in the United States.