동화 읽기를 통한 어린이 철학교육

Abstract

In order for children to make balanced decisions in the deluge of information and knowledge, it is required to be a person with the ability to think creatively rather than to deliver information and knowledge. For this end, it is the most important to develop children's ability to think. However, children's ability to think can be promoted by calling into questions actively and trying to solve the questions for themselves, not by simply receiving and memorizing the given things. Children tend to answer the questions cleverly, asking continuously with pure curiosity toward the world. In addition, they try to find answers to questions that they are eager to know or that the grown-ups raise. They are able to find the correct solutions when they can think deeply with experience and knowledge accumulated. However, there are arguments that children cannot dive into philosophy because they mainly rely on adults, which makes them insufficient to the ability to think. Especially, The theory of cognitive development by Piaget argues that children are short of the ability to think philosophically. Lipman & Matthew raised an objection against Piaget, saying that he underestimated children's ability to think while acknowledging the theory of cognitive development to some extent. The main reason is that children can be considerate of others altruistically through conversation. Right decision can be made by right thinking so that philosophy education is needed in childhood. It is desirable to start philosophy education from childhood before one's values and the way of thinking become hard. Thus, children should learn philosophy because philosophy is the study for promoting the ability to think independently. Many philosophers say that the way of thinking should be developed rather than philosophy itself. Therefore, philosophy education for children can be done not by memorizing ideas but by approaching them with ease. The tales are the familiar texts for children which contain episodes from their lives. The tales also have some philosophical topics to discuss. Furthermore, there are universal subjects and philosophy controversy in tales. Through questioning and answering over the tales, children can learn how to think philosophically. By doing so, children can acquire thinking power which is connected with inferential ability, creativity, sociability, ethics, and abilities to find some meaning in experiences. Featuring the format of telling stories, the tales from IAPC presented some philosophical tales which can cover from kindergarten children to 12 grade students. However, the tales from IAPC are not suitable for teaching Korean students because of the social-cultural differences. I, the writer tried the philosophical inquiry with the tales familiar to Korean children in groups. This is the time for children to study philosophy, breaking the stereotype that philosophy is hard.