Intent:
P4C (Philosophy for Children) is an opportunity for children to develop lifelong thinking skills that will equip them to navigate the world beyond education and help mould them into well-rounded individuals and citizens of tomorrow. The intent behind it is to form communities of enquiry that are rooted in the 4C’s of P4C: Creative, Caring, Collaborative and Critical Thinking. Children will have the opportunity to engage with various stimuli and challenge themselves to think beyond the stimulus. They are encouraged to develop and deploy their speaking and listening skills to good effect and create a respectful environment in which they all strive for the truth.
Implementation:
Unlike traditional subjects of the National Curriculum, P4C sessions are facilitated, not taught. They mostly follow a simple structure of children being exposed to a stimulus (a picture, piece of music, poem etc.) and collating their thoughts and responses to it. From those initial thoughts, we make links between them and relate them to core concepts (love, death, life, peace, democracy etc.) and then try to form questions related to them for discussion. We interrogate those questions and distil the philosophical and challenging ones before choosing which one we would like to have a dialogue about as a community of thinkers. The children’s thoughts are recorded into P4C portfolios in each class and then this follows the cohort throughout their school years.
P4C will look different across the year groups: children in Reception will still be examining what makes a question, whereas Year 5 children may well be choosing to have discussions about the nature of war and peace. The aim is that older children will be able to competently run their own enquiries independent of any adult support.
Impact:
P4C has a proven impact on children’s attainment across all areas of the curriculum and the embedded practice that will be developed will show itself in improved results. Children will be able to elucidate more clearly about challenging problems they may be experiencing in their learning, as well as any personal ones. Children will have a toolkit to hand that will enable them to solve problems before needing the assistance of adults.
Children will greatly develop their speaking and listening skills as a result of P4C sessions being a regular part of the varied learning diet at RHS. Children will emerge from their exposure to and participation in P4C sessions with an enhanced self-worth as well as having more tools to skilfully defuse social situations that may emerge in their lives. They will learn the power and value of dialogue as a tool to tackle complex problems. They will experience validation, as their thoughts, opinions and feelings are expressed and valued by their peers and staff. This will give them the skills necessary to be happier and more productive members of society.
