P4C and the British Columbia Curriculum’s Core Competencies: Thinking

The British Columbia’s curriculum’s second core competency of “thinking” is, once again, at the core of philosophy for children pedagogy. The competency is broken down into two sub-competencies: creative thinking and critical thinking.

First-generation P4C was designed to promote critical thinking (especially logical thinking) in children. This was Matthew Lipman’s original vision. For example, a representative anecdote in Lipman’s P4C handbook/novel Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery goes something like this (paraphrased/summarized):

A young boy named Harry is at home when his mother is visited by a friend who is suspicious of the people who help the poor in their community. She has heard that communists help the poor, and she worries those helping the poor in her community are communists. Harry points out the logical flaw in her reasoning: just because communists help the poor does not mean everyone who helps the poor is a communist. [Just because all Canadians like pineapple on pizza does not make anyone who likes pineapple on pizza a Canadian.]

The ability to see the flaw in the mother’s friend’s argument is important, and such logical thinking is part of P4C, but the concerns of second-generation P4C are broader. Critical thinking and logical thinking are not synonyms. For example, though logical thinking can be beneficial in many contexts (including for Harry in the example above), in others it can be impoverished. Certain contexts do not readily admit of logical analysis. For instance, “culture” is not an object of logical analysis. Yet it is certainly within the realm of critical thinking and critical analysis. The mistake I think Lipman made, then, was being overly focused on logic and not the broader notion of criticality. Not that logic is wrong; merely that is incomplete, and at times inappropriately applied.

This critique has important consequences for education in British Columbia. P4C is not merely about coldly applying the rules of philosophy (logic) to particular problems. It is more holistic than that: P4C brings Indigenous ways of knowing into the conversation, and values them both within their socio-cultural context and in their application to the questions we face on a day-to-day basis. Knowledge exists so far beyond the coldness and narrowness of many philosophers’ conceptions. Descartes told us that knowledge is “justified and true belief” – I agree with this, to an extent; however, there is more than one justification for believing a proposition. And it is important to recognize that a judgement framed around a proposition is itself a culturally embedded notion.

The core competency of “thinking” also includes “creative thinking.” Here is what the British Columbia curriculum says about creative thinking:

Creative Thinking involves the generation of ideas and concepts that are novel and innovative in the context in which they are generated, reflection on their value to the individual or others, and the development of chosen ideas and concepts from thought to reality.

People who think creatively are curious and open-minded, have a sense of wonder and joy in learning, demonstrate a willingness to think divergently, and are comfortable with complexity. A creative thinker reflects on existing ideas and concepts; uses imagination, inventiveness, resourcefulness, and flexibility; and is willing to take risks to go beyond existing knowledge.

BC Curriculum on “creative thinking”

First of all, this is beautiful. I read these two brief paragraphs and reflect on why I began studying philosophy in the first place: inchoate curiosity, well-ordered open-mindedness, a propensity for so-called “divergent” thinking, and an appreciation for the marketplace of ideas and the desire to jump in with my “imagination, inventiveness, resourcefulness, and flexibility” and “willing[ness] to take [intellectual] risks.”

To think creatively is to think philosophically, and to think philosophically is to think creatively. P4C aims to stimulate students’ imaginations, expand their conception of possibility, challenge what is accepted, and reflect on their beliefs; it encourages appreciation of subtlety, complexity, and incompleteness; and above all, it encourages the willingness to step outside one’s comfort zone and venture beyond the known horizon of one’s upbringing, knowledge system, and culture, and out into the world of the might-be-possible, the I’ve-never-thought-about-it-that-way, and the “wow.”

Resources:

Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.1976.tb00618.x

BC Curriculum on “Thinking”: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies/thinking

Cartesian epistemology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/