Massimiliano Paraninfo
Conventional wisdom suggests that philosophy isn’t for kids: it’s too abstract, too attention-demanding, and too serious. Not so, according to the minds behind UTM’s new philosophy summer camps. The Little Thinkers Camp and the Philosophy Explorers Camp introduce children aged 6-11 to the wonders of philosophical questions about knowledge, reality, imagination and ethics.
The summer camps are part of an outreach program by the UTM Philosophy department in conjunction with Camp UTM. Led by instructors Erica Congo, a political science and philosophy double major at UTM, and Massimiliano Paraninfo, a philosophy major at U of T St George, the camps approach big philosophical ideas through games, art, as well as more traditional discussions.
For instance, Congo introduced the campers to questions about ethics with a game called ‘Four Corners,’ in which campers go to a corner of the room corresponding to their response to an ethical dilemma: ‘definitely right,’ ‘probably right,’ ‘definitely wrong,’ and ‘probably wrong.’ Through this activity, campers weighed issues such as loyalty, friendship, and fairness, considering whether it was right to tell on a friend who they saw cheating on a test, or if it is okay to decline to help a bully find his lost wallet.
As an academic subject, philosophy is usually associated with university students rather than children. In fact, Ontario is the only province in Canada whose high school curriculum includes philosophy, and it is rare for elementary-aged children to have any exposure to philosophy in the classroom. The philosophy camps aim to change this by taking inspiration from Philosophy for Children (P4C), a worldwide educational movement promoting philosophical engagement with youth and which emphasizes the surprising philosophical capabilities of children.
One parent was blown away when his nine-year-old son returned from the Philosophy Explorers Camp and offered an unprompted explanation of a tricky philosophical concept, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, to his grandparents.
Erica Congo
While some philosophical ideas, like the theories of Aristotle or Kant, might seem beyond the grasp of six-year-olds, many philosophical questions come naturally to children: how do I know that we all experience colours the same way? Why should I behave morally? Does time or space have a beginning or an end?
The camps bring together children from diverse backgrounds, and Congo noticed that their perspectives on these questions often reflected this diversity. For example, in a discussion of what sorts of things count as art, religious campers were more likely to categorize natural things such as sunsets as art.
Sometimes the discussions revealed generational differences between the campers and the instructors, especially concerning opinions about technology. Campers were surprisingly willing to say that they could have genuine friendships with artificial intelligence. But they were also savvier about the technology than one might expect. In a game exploring the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘artificial,’ the young campers were remarkably adept at telling apart human-made and AI-generated images.
Congo says that throughout the camps, she noticed positive changes in campers’ willingness to speak up and to offer their own opinions, even when they went against the grain. She adds that the children become more comfortable when they are given “the confidence to know their opinions are valued, that we care what they think.”