Would you rather …

Today, we took our first baby steps with our introduction to P4C (Philosophy for Children).

I think Mulan is old enough to do P4C lessons.  She is certainly argumentative enough!  But to date we haven’t done much.

The reason for this slow start is that an essential part of P4C (and, I think, philosophy in general) is doing it with a community of people.  You need to have other people around to bounce ideas off and be inspired by.

Here in China, it is not easy to pull together a group of people willing to chat deeply in English.  (My Chinese is not good enough to try P4C in that language.)  I discovered this when I enrolled in a philosophy PhD programme here.  It is equally hard to find peers for Mulan.

So, I have had to put off starting P4C until we move to New Zealand later this year.

But now with my sister and her family coming to visit us here in a few weeks (and we are all planning to continue with regular school times while they are here), I thought I should prepare Mulan for some proper P4C lessons that we will no doubt have with the four cousins.

So today, after we completed the last page of the science book we have been working on, we switched to P4C.  It was really just a warm-up that we did.  But it went quite well.

We did a “would you rather …” activity.  We looked at the pdf document on the computer.  This is what happened.

Question: Would you rather be a giant or a wizard?

Mulan said she would rather be a wizard.  Why?  Because then she would be able to do stuff.  What stuff?  Like making herself able to fly.

Miya said she would rather be a giant.  Why?  She liked the idea of being able to step over a mountain (like in the picture).

Question: If you were bigger than your parents, who would be in charge?

Mulan said she would be in charge.  Even though Mama and Daddy know lots more stuff than you?  Yup.  So, is size the most important thing for deciding who is the boss?  Hehe, yup.  (I am not sure if Mulan really believed this, but she clearly liked the idea of being the boss!)

Miya just liked the idea of being big, and she said the big girl in the picture was her.

Question: Would you rather be a bird or a plane?

Mulan said she would rather be a bird.  Why?  Because planes crash sometimes.  But they almost never crash.  Mmm.

Miya said that she would rather be in a plane.  She said that she likes it when she is in a plane and she loses her tummy (she still remembers that feeling from when we went to Europe six months ago).  Mulan pointed out that the question was what you would like to be, not what you wanted to be in.  Mulan said it didn’t make sense to be a plane.  I think in the end Miya agreed with Mulan to be a bird.

Question: Would you rather live at the top of a skyscraper or in a country cottage?

Mulan said she would rather live in a country cottage.  Why?  Because you can do whatever you want.  You don’t have to share the building with other people.  (I can’t argue with that powerful logic!)

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you rather choose no sweets or no television? (This was not so easy for us, because we have no TV at home, and we mostly don’t bother with sweets.)

Mulan said she would rather keep having sweets.  Why?  Because TV is boring.  And sweets are yummy?  Yup.

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you choose to be rich or famous?

Mulan said she would rather be rich.  Why?  Because she could then buy fun stuff.

Miya agreed.  (I doubt she knows what famous is.)

Clearly, each of these six discussions could have been extended much more.  With a bigger group of children, more reasons would have been put forward and potentially argued about.  I thought it best, though, that I don’t question Mulan too strongly about her choices.  Like it or not, I am the authority, and my “yes, but …”s can easily move from being helpful thought-provoking ideas to authoritarian shut-down criticisms.

As I say, baby steps.