24/08/2010 by Steve Bramall.

This happened in July. It was near the end of term and I had only one more class to prepare for the week before I could go out, play tennis and sink a well earned beer.

But I got stuck - the empty planning sheet just sat there, stared up, taunted me.

‘Come on, can’t be that hard, one little stimulus for the year 2s.’

Then sometimes it is hard - even with a talking planning sheet. Everything you think of seems wrong: too dull, too dangerous, too babyish, too grown up. You imagine all of the pitfalls, none of the fun.

So I did what we all do. I ran through previous classes in my head, checked the list of past stimuli, look up my comments and evaluations. Some had been struggling with listening. So perhaps some reflection on this, or a stimulus to raise the concept? Maybe they needed new opportunities to do some listening, more to one another? But then they’d played most of my listening games already and I couldn’t think of a picture book or a picture or a story that I thought would spark up thinking about listening. Perhaps if I could borrow a hearing aid?

Time to talk to the dog.

Outside the back door, perching on the bench, I got to work with a brush on Biba’s tangled rear. I tried to forget work and imagine myself as a gentlemen’s hairdresser.

‘Did you see the news? Says that humans lived in Brtain a million years ago.’

She’s not interested. I move up to her neck where I know she loves the feeling of the bristles.

‘Flint tools and pine cones.’

She looks back and pushes against the brush.

‘Cool then, must have had clothes and fire - unless they were as hairy as an old collie?’

She shakes. Behind her right ear I find a knot of matted hair that needs scissors and a steady hand.

‘Be hard to get this off with a hand axe!’

I snip the clump away and begin to trim the other ear to match. Just as I start the next sentence, the flow of human-canine barbers chat is interrupted by my mobile sounding a text. Not now, I think. I was just getting good at not thinking about work. It trills again. I undo Biba’s collar and swing the address capsule, decied to ignore the sound of the text. She rolls onto her back, paws waving unsurely in the air. The phone rings.

Not now, I think, scratching her belly roughly as I move away.

‘Not now Biba. Not Now Bernard!’ St Bernard.  A dog whistle? A squeaky toy? Dog in the playground? Oh I love dog in the playground.

I leap inside, and still holding the collar, pick up the phone…

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24/08/2010 by Steve Bramall.

This week I’m planning intergenerational philosophy and as always it takes me back to a negative thought. Philosophy, even philosophy for children, can be a dull spectator sport.

Yes, there are creative spikes in game playing and question making. There’s drama in voting, tension in negotiation, emotional highs and lows. And we usually end in a time pressured, messy scatter of pictures, pens, sketch pads, bottles,  rope and parrot. But there’s really not much philosophy for an outsider to observe.

Which brings a planning challenge. After a week of teaching young persons to facilitate philosophical enquiry, what should we show parents at pick up time?

Graphic stimuli and colourful questions? Photos of outdoor community building and indoor enquiry? Trellisworks of concepts stretched? Tracings of arguments? Quotes of the week? Well yes. But, as the young persons are quick to point out, none of this really captures the spirit of lived philosophy. To illustrate and share this, to get parents to begin to really get it, they need to engage.

‘Engage.’ I remember the concept bouncing around in my head after a day spent team building with Graeme Tiffany and after another day thinking about the display problem with the young persons. Engage in intergenerational philosophy - then the display problem goes away!

So, two groups of Key Stage Three students devised, planned and facilitated philosophical enquiries. In the morning they facilitated for one another, in the afternoon, for their parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, siblings and grandparents. Their ‘display’ was an engagement, a student led, interactive and immersive experience of philosophy for adults.

But philosophy has the habit of giving you more than you bargained for. The enquiry generated questions that spanned the generational divide - ‘Is watching television active or passive?’, ‘Are video games social or anti-social?’ The dialogue brought sharp dischord as well as meetings of minds. I remember heated analysis of the concept of ‘passive’ and challenges to the value and meaning of ‘action’, ‘game’ and ‘teamwork’.  And I recall movements in the room - changes of mind and of heart, commitments to do things and to talk further, a growing appetite for continuing the pursuit.

That was five years ago. Now intergenerational dialogue is a regular and joyful part of my p4c practice. Whether it’s helping parents to enquire with children through picture books, or putting teachers and pupils into the same enquiry, or generating dialogue across community groups - bringing people of different ages together is great because it really changes things.

Intergenerational philosophy started for me as a way to overcome the display problem. But even back then I realised it was going to be more. I realised it while listening to a 12 year old and his grandfather talk seriously for the first time about video games, and then, with mixed feelings, when I heard them agree to play ‘Grand Theft Auto’ together - ’so they could really talk about it’.

Five years on, I recently worked again with a cohort of 11 to 14 year olds, again they facilitated enquiry for parents and teachers, again I worked in collaboration with Graeme Tiffany. But no matter how often I do it, it’s always surprising, always fresh and always fun.

And always I think of the need to ‘engage’.

Graeme Tiffany is an independent informal educator, trainer and philosopher.

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