Making Care Explicit

1. Making Care Explicit Stephanie Burdick M.Ed. Montclair State University Doctoral Student Teachers College Columbia University Philosophy and Education sab2147@columbia.edu

2. Lecture Outline • History of “Caring Thinking” in P4C • Mathew Lipman Definition • The Lack of Care in the Traditional Kindergarten Classroom • Conventional Definition • Nel Noddings • Mathew Lipman • Caring as Explicit Practice • Explicit Practice (my definition) as practice which makes a concept definite and distinct within the community dialogue. • Proposed Model of Caring Curriculum • Based on readings of Nel Nodding’s Caring Communities

3. Caring in P4C • What does Lipman mean? • Creative Thinking • The making of judgments through affective • Whole/part relationships • The making of possibility • Critical Thinking • The making of judgments through criteria • Reasonableness • Logic (formal and informal) • Context recognition • Caring Thinking

4. Caring Thinking • Care for the other • Development, Love, Respect • Care for my beliefs • Valuing • Care for the inquiry • Taking judgment seriously • “If thinking does not contain valuing or valuation, it is liable to approach its subject matters apathetically, indifferently, and uncaringly, and this means it would be diffident even about inquiry itself” (Lipman, 2003)

5. Care and the Emotions • Lipman notes, “Elgin maintains that, an emotion provides a frame of reference. For example, parental love is a framework within which one organizes a set of feelings, attitudes, and actions” (Lipman, 2003, p.129)

6. Developing Care (Pre-2003) • THEORETICALLY IMPLICIT • PRACTICALLY IMPLICIT • IMPLICIT IN THE CURRICULUM • Meaning of implicit: The concept is an implied concept but it is not treated as a separate theme or content.

7. Theoretical Work Pre-2003 • Lipman’s Motivation • Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children • Philosophy in the Classroom

8. Curriculum Pre-2003 • Harry • Lisa • Pixie (1981) Kio and Gus (1986) Elfie (1988) Mark (1980) Suki (1978) • The Doll Hospital

9. Practice Pre-2003 • Community of Inquiry

10. NOUS ?????????? • (1996) • Nous says, “I found myself deeply touched. He was ready to cut himself off from other humans but to remain in touch with me. It struck me that for someone willing to do that for me showed that he cared for me as deeply as a I cared for him. After that, I tried extra hard to pronounce the words he gave me just as he wanted, and I was successful.” (Lipman, 1996, p. 32)

11. NOUS ?????????? • Pixie states, “We learned so much from you Nous! It occurs to me that, in our caring for Nous, we and the giraffe’s are are one.” (Lipman, 1996 p. 76).

12. NOUS ?????????? • Isabel notes, “Our emotions are as important as our eyes are. They relate us to the world. I mean, if you care for some person or place or thing, then it follows that you have a relationship with that person, place, or thing like a caring relationship” (Lipman, 1996, p. 54)

13. NOUS ?????????? • Lipman notes in the Manual for Nous (Leading Idea 19) • There is an emotion called caring and there is caring thinking. They are two different things, but they overlap, just as criticism and critical thinking are two things that are different. A case could be made that of the six activities listed, caring is the most fundamental, since it is the basic response to mattering. (Lipman, Manual, 1996, p. 153).

14. NOUS ?????????? • WHAT’S WRONG WITH NOUS? • Not focused on how a child actually speaks. • Lipman is indoctrinating his theory of caring thinking • As an ethical curriculum it only promotes one kind of ethics, virtue ethics.

15. PRE-2003 • The concept “caring thinking” is implicitly treated in the theory, curriculum, and practice of P4C • (in the United States)

16. CARING THINKING 2003

17. CURRENT PRACTICE Post-2003 • EXPLICIT: (my definition) as practice which makes a concept definite and distinct within the community dialogue. • Theoretical (made explicit) • Curriculum (still implicit) • Practice • The Community of Inquiry • Caring Thinking does not necessarily follow.

18. In the Future? • What happens if “caring thinking” is not made explicit in practice with students?

19. Kindergarten !!!!!!!!! • Can we make a circle? • Do you talk to me or your peers? • “Well it stops my thinking!” • NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND • “Policy trends in kindergarten during the 1980’s and the emerging 1990’s focus on the removal of community” (Goffin & Stegalin, 1992, p. 5)

20. What must we do? • I believe that the Lipman curriculum assumes that students are already engaged in a relationship with one another; thus caring is implicit in the practice. • Yet, Lipman makes caring explicit in the theory in 2003, should we not do the same in our practice?

21. CARE as an explicit practice? • Lipman notes, “A well constructed curriculum and pedagogy will seek to bring to better understanding and perhaps even to expression those emotions such as joy and friendship that are appropriate but are sometimes repressed” (2003, p. 134)

22. Proposed Curriculum • Community of Inquiry Philosophy Time • Overall Classroom • Noddings notes, “Dialogue is a common search for understanding, empathy, or appreciation. It can be playful or serious, logical or imaginative, goal or process orientated, but it is always a genuine quest for something undetermined at the beginning” (1992, p. 23)

23. Categories of Care Perspective Relation Disposition Judgment Method of Teaching Dialogical Phenomenological Organic Proposed Curriculum

24. Three Questions? • ? Is it true that “caring thinking” must be made explicit in the CI/P4C setting? • ? What are the implications of providing an explicit place for caring thinking in philosophical practice? • ? What is the best method for implementing this practice (if at all)?

25. The EndThank YOU