Formative Experience in Philosophy with Children: Reports, Potentialities, and Challenges

Abstract

This text analyzes the theoretical and practical nuances of a formative experience developed in the "Philosophy with Children" course at the State University of Rio Grande do Norte (UERN/Caicó Campus), carried out in collaboration with the Municipal Education Network/SEMED/Caicó/RN, to train teachers to work in "Philosophical Thought" workshops. The theoretical framework is based on the articulation between Philosophy for Children – PfC, by Lipman (1990), the philosophy with children movement articulated by Kohan (2012), and Larrosa's (2014) conception of experience. By experiencing a transition from the hegemonic educational model to dynamics of collective meaning-making through dialogical workshops, participants reported significant conceptual and methodological transformations: the reconfiguration of the concept of childhood, and the shift in the teacher's role from that of a passive transmitter of content to a posture of mediator and articulator. However, the immersion revealed structural challenges for the practice of philosophy in childhood: the resistance imposed by traditional school practices; the realization of an important methodological tension: the risk of rigidity and the "schooling" of philosophy when applying Lipman's structured manuals, contrasting with the danger of conceptual relativism and the loss of analytical rigor in the commitment to the philosophy with children movement. Added to this is the intrinsic difficulty adults have in "unlearning" their ingrained ways of acting and thinking. The experience continues to invite us to consider the power of the relationship between philosophy and childhoods, configuring itself as an ethical, pedagogical, and political gesture between the university and basic education.