Engaging inter-generationally

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.

This entry was posted on 24/08/2010 at 08:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.