Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an educational movement that began in the late 1960s. The UP Diliman (UPD) Department of Philosophy (DPhilo) published an article detailing the origin and current state of P4C in the Philippines.
Below is the article Pioneering Philosophy for Children in the Philippines by Karen Connie Abalos-Orendain, PhD.
Pioneering Philosophy for Children in the Philippines
By Karen Connie Abalos-Orendain, PhD
Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an educational movement which started in the late 1960s when Matthew Lipman was still in Columbia. It focuses on the idea of the classroom as a community of inquiry (COI). In the 1970s, Lipman met Ann Margaret Sharp in Montclair State University and together they developed university-level programs in P4C.
Back in 1990, while Zosimo E. Lee, PhD, [professorial lecturer at the UP Diliman (UPD) Department of Philosophy (DPhilo)], was finishing his PhD in the State University of New York at Buffalo (Suny Buffalo), he chanced upon a leaflet on P4C, which came from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) at Montclair State University, New Jersey.
“On hindsight, it seems that my work in Philo for Children was really in consonance with what I already started in my doctoral dissertation involving rational conflict resolution and somehow the work with P4C became in sync,” Lee narrates.
Lee is referring to how his research centered on themes involving the notions of “rational conflict resolution, peace building, being able to deal with different perspectives, and the role of philosophy in providing that kind of understanding which Rawls calls public reason.” He even wrote an article on the creation of public reason wherein he compared Rawls’ perspective with Habermas’ perspective and linked it with the role of the community of inquiry by Lipman.
Having met both Lipman and Sharp who were the pioneers of P4C and COI in a conference in 1996 helped Lee appreciate even more the importance of a dialogical community. After the conference, Lipman published Lee’s article on communicative inquiry in the journal, Thinking.
After said conference, Lee incorporated what he learned in his own classes, and it led to projects wherein he taught P4C as a pedagogical tool to public elementary school teachers. Philosophy colleagues, Renato Manaloto [assistant professor at DPhilo], Napoleon Mabaquiao Jr., PhD, [professor at De La Salle University], Darlene Berberabe-Lim [former UP College of Law dean], lawyer Eric Vera, Isidro Manuel Valero, [assistant professor at DPhilo] as well as the late Silvino V. Epistola, PhD, and Leonardo De Castro, PhD, [professorial lecturer at DPhilo] joined him.
Lee used the method of communicative inquiry to grade school students and the learning agenda came from students. He diligently made the rounds in different districts in the public schools of Manila between 1997 to 1999. These weekly sessions truly helped public school teachers who now had a new pedagogical tool to use. Because of this experience, Lee was able to see how to implement a training program using the methodology of the COI. Most importantly, how to use this innovative tool within the Department of Education (DepEd) curriculum.
Building a COI. Lee fondly remembers one instance.
“In P. Gomez (school), I facilitated a Grade 6 class. The discussion came to the question, ‘What is the difference between the mind and the brain?’ The students were so good at furnishing ideas and giving examples. They were so articulate that I felt that the students were already getting ahead of the teacher and the teacher was the one who was trying to catch up. But that just shows that when the students feel [they can] talk about their own ideas and share their own thoughts, they really become free… They own their own learning.”
In 2000, Lee returned to the IAPC in Mendham, New Jersey. He said, “It further deepened what I learned from the first seminar and reinforced some of the hypothesis in the training programs that I was conducting.” He then became a long-standing member of the screening committee for the writing awards of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children. He also presented a paper in a council meeting of practitioners of P4C from all over the world in Winchester, England. He was at the UNESCO meeting in Paris when UNESCO adopted P4C as an educational practice.
He continued to teach P4C in his undergraduate and graduate courses even as he juggled it with his leadership role as dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) in UPD. In 2012, he continued his work in training public school teachers and principals in and around Manila, especially in Tondo, who were introduced to the COI. The Center for Excellence in Public Education (CENTEX) in Tondo, Manila, and Bauan, Batangas adopted the COI in their teaching and these trained teachers were also the ones that provided the facilitation during the training programs in Negros and Cagayan de Oro with the help of Ayala Foundation. This worthwhile endeavor was further expanded to provinces outside Manila.
Lee clarifies, “What does the COI do? Because you shift the generation of the learning agenda from the teacher to the students, the students take more initiative in their own learning process. And it starts with asking questions. Kasi isa sa mga nawawala sa mga bata eventually, if it is not encouraged, is the asking of questions. Children when they were very young ask a lot of questions. And the questions of children at two to three years are the most profound philosophical questions you could ever find.”
He further adds that one of the most important things to do during these workshops is to rekindle the teachers’ curiosity as well [as] to arouse their questioning ability and their own sense of wonder. With his experience and knowledge, Lee has developed his own format and has even incorporated the Filipino perspective in his method, making the tool even more effective in the context of Philippine education.
He emphasizes that “… the whole point of the COI is really to focus on the thinking process. Because it is through and in the thinking process, the learning occurs. The students learn to think for themselves, to value their own thinking. They get to generate their own criteria to when they can say to themselves that they are thinking better. And this is done together with others so that the learning process is collective, and it is shared. There is also self-correction.” Both students and teachers share this experience of “building criteria for better reasoning”.
Lee considers the culmination of his lifelong work in a 2016 project done with UNESCO at Ateneo de Manila University, wherein participants from other countries such as South Korea and Myanmar joined. Grade 6 students, Filipino children who benefitted from previous workshops, impressively demonstrated the community of inquiry to the participants by conducting their own philosophical discussions. One professor from Myanmar even said they want their children to be able to do what they witnessed.
P4C in the Philippines now. Lee’s P4C legacy endures even after his retirement from academic life. Not only has it reverberated in the public school system who directly learned from him, his colleagues from the DPhilo continues to train teachers and students to further propagate P4C and the COI. Ma. Theresa T. Payongayong, PhD, professor at DPhilo, attributes to Lee her introduction to P4C.
She shares, “while I have been involved in various P4C training, seminars, workshops and other P4C-related activities over the past 25 years, I hold Dr. Zosimo E. Lee in high regard as the pioneer in P4C. I appreciate his invitation for me to participate in P4C mainstreaming efforts among public and private basic education teachers. My interest in P4C was sparked by the realization that it has the potential to catalyze meaningful change and improve the education system.”
Payongayong considers her initiative to offer P4C classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels a pioneering effort. As part of this, she provided students with the opportunity to engage in actual P4C sessions with grade school and high school students from both public and private schools. Some of her students participated in sessions in Bulacan, Batangas, Marikina, Manila, and even at our own UPIS [UP Integrated School]. In 2005, she also learned directly from Lipman and Sharp through the IAPC Training Workshop. She was the only Filipino participant at that time.
A group of faculty members from the department led by Jeanette Yasol-Naval, PhD, [professor at DPhilo], conducted a teachers’ training for the subject, Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person; P4C sessions were held as culminating activities. In partnership with DepEd Division of Nueva Ecija from 25 to 27 July 2018 and 19 to 21 June 2019, over a hundred teachers were introduced to the pedagogy. The group consisted of Payongayong, Karen Connie Abalos-Orendain, PhD, and Symel Noelin S. de Guzman-Daulat, Arlyn P. Macapinlac, and Romulo T. Bañares, Jr., [associate professor and assistant professors at DPhilo, respectively].
Lumberto G. Mendoza, PhD, [associate professor at DPhilo], also continues Lee’s legacy. He conducted a face-to-face training workshop on the use of COI for teaching in OB Montessori School, San Juan. He has given similar workshops online as well. This was in 2020 with Mindanao State University in General Santos City. He worked with junior faculty members Gavin Nigel L. Chuacuco, [instructor at DPhilo], Aleli M Caraan, [lecturer at the UP Manila Department of Social Sciences], and Marielle Antoinette Hermoso Zosa, [assistant professor at DPhilo], ensuring that these techniques will be passed on to the next generation of facilitators.
Most recently, COI was used by Chuacuco, Patrick Joshua Villegas, [instructor at DPhilo], De Guzman-Daulat, Macapinlac, Lily Beth Centeno-Lumagbas, PhD, [assistant professor at DPhilo], and Payongayong in the CSSP Extramural Training Seminar for Social Science Teachers with the theme, Ethics, Artificial Intelligence, and Knowledge Production. The department led the workshop Reclaiming the Self: The Role of Philosophy in Navigating Challenges in Research002C was a mix of lectures and a community of inquiry.
Indeed, the DPhilo continues to propagate and develop P4C, especially in light of the inclusion of the course, Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Personin the Kto12 Program of the DepEd. Because of this commitment, six of the senior faculty members of the leading analytic philosophy school in the country will participate in the 2025 Summer Program of the IAPC in Montclair State University in New Jersey. Payongayong, who is currently the assistant vice president for academic affairs (Curriculum and Instruction) for the UP System will once again attend the IAPC course and she will be joined by [DPhilo] Department Chair Liza Ocampo as well as Abalos-Orendain, Centeno-Lumagbas, Macapinlac, and Yasol-Naval. Through these efforts, the department endeavors to establish a P4C Center soon.