P4C in Chinese

Yesterday, we had a P4C (Philosophy for Children) class in Chinese.  It went well, and we plan for this to be a regular Monday after school event.

Mama had mentioned to a few friends that the girls and I had been doing some P4C lately, and the friends liked the sound of it.  So, in addition to Mulan and Miya, we had three other children (the same age as Mulan) join us.

Earlier in the day, I prepared the lesson.  But Mama took charge of the actual class (with me sitting alongside whispering in her ear when needed).

Again, the lesson we used was inspired by The Philosophy Man.  We took his basic plan here and modified it.  Mama printed off the cards, and wrote the Chinese words for each object on them.

We all sat on the floor in the playroom, and started with introductions.  I had suggested that each child give their name and then say one thing that is not true about themselves.

Mama then briefly said what would be happening in the class.  The main point was that P4C is different from normal school lessons in the same way that storytelling is different from story reading.  In P4C, the children do the storytelling; they are not merely listening to a teacher reading the story.

The rest of the lesson was spent doing various activities with the cards.  Since this was the first lesson, the topics themselves weren’t deeply philosophical.  It was more skills preparation and development.  The main objective was to get the children used to “because-ing”.  That is, giving ideas and then giving reasons for those ideas.  A second objective was to get the children thinking about similarities, differences and categorising.  A third objective was a general one about the P4C environment—getting them used to contributing and listening to others contributions.

These were the activities I listed to do with the cards:

1.      Place all cards face down on the floor in the middle.  Children each choose three cards.  Each child then chooses from their three cards the animal they would most like to be, and in turn they tell the class why they chose it.  They keep that card and return the other cards face down.  Do two rounds of this.

2.      Children each choose three cards.  Each child then chooses from their three cards the animal they would least like to be, and in turn they tell the class why they chose it.  They keep that card and return the other cards face down.  Do two rounds of this.

After this, each child should have four cards.

3.      Noah’s Ark activity.  Someone should briefly tell the Noah’s Ark story, if some children don’t know it.  The ark is just about to depart and there is only space left on the ark for one more pair of animals.  Each child must choose one animal from the four they have.  In turn, they say why they think their animal should be saved.

Put all the cards back in the middle, face down, and mix them up.

4.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they give three similarities between the two animals.  Return the cards.

5.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they give three differences between the two animals.  Return the cards.

6.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they choose whether to give three similarities or differences between the two animals.  Return the cards.

7.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they say how their pair of animals could be related to each other (A eats B, A is a pet of B, A is cuter than B, etc). Return the cards.

8.      Turn all the cards face up in the middle.  Get the children to work together to sort them into categories (eg, size, or type, etc).  All animal cards need to be categorised.  Mix them up and re-sort them again into different categories.

9.      Turn all the cards face up on the tile floor (lots of room needed for this).  Get the children to work together to move the pictures around and draw (with chalk) relationship arrows between each of the pictures.  Write one word next to each arrow to explain the relationship.  All animals need to be connected in the web of relationships.

Our lesson lasted about one hour, and we completed up to activity 8.  The children were all active and talkative, and were all very happy to do the activities as planned.  Good answers were given by all.

The main problem was that it went on a little too long.  After about 45 minutes, they were starting to get overly excited and bouncy.  Activity 8 wasn’t done quite so well, as it required more cooperation, discussion and patience.  Their bounciness meant they weren’t able to take the time to organise themselves first.  So, some children started sorting by size while others started sorting by type.  At the end, when we went through the “fish” category, we were able to ask whether the goldfish could have equally gone in the “small” category and the whale in the “big” category.**  In future, we will aim to keep the lessons to no more than about 45 minutes.

** This reminded me of Michel Foucault in The Order of Things where he quotes Jorge Luis Borges quoting “a certain Chinese Encyclopaedia”:

[A]nimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.