Setting forth from some of Foucault's theoretical and methodological premises, this paper aims at problematizing the contemporary discursive automatisms imposed on childhood, which endow it with an aura of bliss and consecrate it with the role of sowing all things, while, at the same time, they apply to it the taint of incontinence, corruption and subservience, thus attempting against its errancy, originality and therefore its generativity. The procedure adopted is an unlikely interweaving of multiple vocalizations about childhood. In a Barthesian style, we chose an ensemble of discontinuous fragments of classical theoretical texts, journalistic accounts and literary works; all interspersed either by slogans fond to what is commonly called the industrial culture or by striking passages of popular songs. Together, such fragments finally compose a brief and unusual compendium of things actually said not only on childhood, but also for it, if not on its behalf. The strategy of textual composition carried out is that of the bricolage of such shared, ordinary childhood statements, aiming at shuffling the authorial sources. In other words, what interests us is a sort of distorted, hyperbolic, even monstrous repetition of certain discursive fulgurations about the world and the life of children, beyond or beneath the borders of their original enunciative territory. Moreover, it’s about rubbing such statements and, perhaps, making them short-circuit and, ultimately, raving them, in order to reverberate not only the movement of repetition present in them, but also their fissures, their blind or shaky spots; exhaustion spots; turning points, perhaps. We should also clarify that we do not intend either to describe, or to interpret the discursive contents that mark the childhood drumbeat routine; we only intend to bring out, once again, the circular and reiterative ingenuity which animates them. In doing so, we shall stoke their operating nerves and ridges, temporarily displacing the statements of their totalizing pretensions. Subjected to a forceful displacement of their enunciative jurisdiction, when caught in their arbitrariness, boastfulness and, ultimately, in their vulnerability, these statements perhaps start acting like circus mirrors which don’t reflect, don’t represent, don’t aim at being the herald of truth, but rather caricature the image of whomever stands in front of them in search of a revelation. This procedure is justified not by the resort to an allegedly unorthodox, fancy or clandestine method in relation to the protocols of "good manners" in expression, but by the invocation of an intemperate, eager manner of critical addressing to the robust and even crackly performativity of the type of experience handed down to childhood – taken this performativity not only as an automatic effect of a relentless dispositif, but precisely as a "focus of experience", according to Foucault’s concept of this term.

At the advent of the common school era in the United States members of the Transcendentalist Club directly challenged Lockean pedagogy and traditional, dogmatic religious instruction in favor of a dialogically-driven moral education experience that harkened back to Plato’s academy. In particular, the Transcendentalists contested the ascension of empiricism in the common school movement at large and within the spiritual and intellectual life of their own brethren, Harvard’s Unitarians. Greek and Latin, languages which had recorded the Western intellectual tradition for thousands of years, were being supplanted by the ascension of the modern sciences from the academy to the university. Many intellectuals were concerned that the liberal and fine arts would no longer shape the outwardly focused minds designing and building the modern industrial state. Wary of any materialistic cognitive scaffolding that could emerge from focusing solely on the empirical world, the Transcendentalists favored Kant and Hegel, upholding rationalism alongside Christian mysticism. A Transcendentalist, in the words of Emerson, “believes in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy….the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it.” Schooling should therefore honor perpetual openness and depth of thought through various forms of expression, speech being one of them. In 1834, Bronson Alcott, a member of the Transcendentalist Club, opened the School for Human Culture in Boston, Massachusetts. Alcott sought to provide children with an education that honored personal inspiration and intellectual acumen through a pedagogy which challenged dogmatic mimesis. Alcott argued that “the child is the book. The operations of his mind are the true system…. Let him follow out his impulses, the thoughts…in their own principles and rational order of expression….” Thirty boys and girls from the ages of three to twelve attended Alcott’s school, which was designed to promote the intellectual and spiritual growth of the young. The Socratic method formed the pedagogical core of the curriculum at Alcott’s institution. He used quotes from the Gospels, classical philosophy, and literature as jumping points for dialogue. During spelling lessons specific words were discussed to help elicit conceptual understanding and linguistic fluidity. Fortunately, Alcott’s assistant teacher, Elizabeth Peabody, recorded many of these conversations. The paper presents an analysis of several of the dialogues presented in Peabody’s text. Studying Alcott’s specific questions, student responses to those questions, and the ensuing dialogical moves provides a gateway to understanding Transcendentalist pedagogy. In particular the paper focuses on Alcott’s attempts at moral regulation, a concept defined by Rousmaniere, Dehli & Coninck-Smith as “the disciplining of personal identities and the shaping of conduct and conscience through self-appropriation of morals and beliefs about what is right and wrong, possible and impossible, normal and pathological.” Alcott believed that reasonable deliberation is imperative for the moral regulation of children, because within the dialectical encounter the reflective mind is modeled. Moreover, Alcott argued that the realm of ideas enables one to experience the Good, and thereby avoid of the temptations of the material world.

La infancia, la nuestra y la del mundo, tal como se ha visto desde hace siglos por el ideal humanista no es, no existe, se fue, difícilmente vuelva, tal vez nunca existió. Esa alma sin lenguaje, afásica, vacilante, zozobrada, aturdida, desacomodada, coleccionadora, soñadora, ingenua, metida para sí misma en su propio mundo, enredada en sus propias sensaciones, corresponde a una época diferente a la de hoy. No sobrevivió a la globalización, a la escolarización cada vez más temprana, ni a las imágenes pervertidas de la publicidad, ni a las representaciones ingenuas que todos reproducimos. No sobrevive ni al hambre excesiva ni al consumo excesivo. Se convierte en otra cosa. Algo uniformemente informe. Algo que no es el "niño actual en la escuela". No alcanza, al menos para mí, disponer de un retrato elaborado de antemano o de una fotografía instantánea o de una cinematografía veloz y evanescente. El tema –el niño, hoy, la escuela- que no es un tema sino un desborde de cuestiones, exige algo de detenimiento, de cuidado, pero al mismo tiempo de asumir riesgos, de poner en juego percepciones extremas. No apenas el concepto de “niños hoy en la escuela”, rápido y certero que, luego será quizá subrayado por alguien a quien desconozco.

Neste artigo, apresentamos um breve estudo filosófico sobre o aprender, posicionando-nos contra a tendência de alguns discursos pedagógicos que desenham o aprender como uma figura de segundo plano no binômio ensinar-aprender. Nossa hipótese é de que isso ocorre devido à centralidade do método no processo educativo de ensino. Visamos, aqui, deslocar o aprender para primeiro plano, e, para tanto, consideramos importante fazer uma desarticulação do binômio ensinar-aprender pela descentralização do método no processo educacional. Encontramos Gilles Deleuze como um potencial interlocutor, dado que, para ele, a aprendizagem está relacionada à interpretação de signos. A aprendizagem como interpretação de signos traz consigo a concepção segundo a qual aprender é uma experiência de busca pelo sentido de signos que se impõem. Neste sentido, Deleuze nos traz a possibilidade de pensar uma aprendizagem desvinculada não somente do método de ensino, como, também, da comum ideia de que aprender é adquirir conhecimento. Nosso esforço será, aqui, então, articular as ideias deleuzianas sobre o aprender com os conceitos de “pensamento”, “criação” e “problema”, essenciais ao pensamento educativo deleuziano. Procuramos, fundamentalmente, propor um outro olhar sobre a aprendizagem, aliando-nos, de um lado à concepção segundo a qual aprender é decifrar signos, e, de outro, trazendo a concepção do que aqui chamamos de “pedagogia dos afetos”.

No es la «facilidad» en el aprender -el hecho de que sea habitual hacerlo- lo que justifica un pensamiento sobre educación, sino la experiencia de su dificultad. Esta es la raíz del argumento que se pretende desarrollar en este texto. De modo específico, se trata de una reflexión que toma como punto de apoyo y raíz de su argumento la experiencia humana, no de la normalidad, sino la de la excepcionalidad, entendida como experiencia de lo frágil y de lo vulnerable. Se trata de situar esta experiencia de lo frágil como un ejercicio de pensamiento en relación con la pedagogía, que, en ciertos formatos discursos inaugura el gesto perverso de introducir a los jóvenes dentro de las escuelas para, cerrando las puertas de las aulas después, impedirles su salida al mundo, convirtiéndoles así en eternamente menores de edad. Eternos aprendices. Pero también en relación con la filosofía, que se vuelve incapaz, en sus aspiraciones de construir un pensamiento adulto y organizado, de decir nada ante quienes tienen una voz al borde de la palabra. Frente a toda una tradición que, tanto en la filosofía moral, como en la filosofía política y en la filosofía de la educación, ha pensado los asuntos que les concernían (la experiencia ética, la acción política, la actividad de la educación, respectivamente) desde la experiencia de un cierto orden de lo normal, o de lo normalizado, se trata, entonces, de pensar la educación como una experiencia del «cuidado de sí» y del «cuidado del otro» que toma como punto de apoyo y reconocimiento ético lo vulnerable, lo que deviene otro como accidente.

In the last 16 years, I have travelled extensively to engage with diverse others in Socratic inquiry. These 'Socrates Café' gatherings often bring together people of vastly disparate backgrounds and experiences and ages who nonetheless have a shared striving for impassioned yet thoughtful discourse. Why does my approach to practicing philosophical inquiry merit the sobriquet ‘Socratic’? What are its intellectual and processual underpinnings? In addressing these questions, the overarching aim here is to present a genealogy of one way of doing philosophical inquiry that can legitimately be called Socratic – a way that is open and accessible to people of all ages.

Trata-se de uma reflexão acerca dos problemas, limites e possibilidades do ensino de filosofia, a partir das relações entre filosofia e educação, visto especialmente pela perspectiva de Matthew Lipman. Para empreender essa reflexão, num primeiro momento, partimos de alguns questionamentos, tais como: o que é filosofia? Quais suas especificidades? Quais são as exigências para que o pensamento filosófico aconteça? Incluímos em nossa discussão outras questões suplementares tais como: o exame sobre a relação da filosofia com a educação; a análise sobre os limites da filosofia como atividade pedagógica; indicações sobre as aproximações da filosofia à educação, na atualidade; e, finalmente, uma reflexão, embora modesta, sobre uma possível saída para a problemática, envolvendo o ensino de filosofia. Para realizar tais objetivos, procedemos com uma pesquisa bibliográfica, embasados principalmente nas obras de Lipman, tendo sido recorrido outros autores conforme a necessidade de suporte teórico para nossa argumentação. Para concluir, diante da problemática da Filosofia para Crianças e a linguagem no contexto do ensino, anunciamos a importância de considerarmos para futuro estudos, as interrelações entre Lipman e Wittgenstein.

One of the fundamental objectives of Philosophy for Children (P4C) is the cognitive development of elementary and secondary school pupils. In this text, we examine to what extent the age of the children and the number of years of praxis in P4C influence the development of their critical thinking. To do so we used, as an analysis grid, the model of the developmental process of dialogical critical thinking that emerged from the analysis of transcripts of exchanges among pupils aged 4 to 12 years (Daniel et al., 2005; Daniel & Gagnon, 2011). The content analyzed was the “philosophical” exchanges among pupils. Participants were 13 groups of pupils from preschool to the end of elementary school. These groups originated from two schools, one in Quebec and one in Ontario. At the time the data were collected, the Quebec school groups had one year of P4C praxis, whereas the Ontario school groups had two years of praxis. Results indicate that children’s age and number of years of philosophical praxis are among the factors that influence the developmental process of critical thinking.