Frog and Toad

"Yes. So there’s a wonderful story in there called “Dragons and Giants.” Frog and Toad are trying to work out what brave is, and what it is to be brave. They start off by saying these characters are all brave and they look in the mirror and ask, “Are we brave?” They say, “Well we look brave.” Which is great, because you can then ask the children ‘What does brave look like?’ You get them to do all sorts of poses. The next part of the story takes you through how the two characters try to test for bravery, by going up a mountain. They come across various things — like an eagle and an avalanche — and each time they get quite visibly scared and shout out, “I am not afraid!” and move on to the next thing. At the end of the story you start with a simple question and ask, “Were Frog and Toad brave?” It connects to the story in a concrete way by referring to the characters and the concept. You get some responses. Then, after a while, we move to the abstract. I might say to the children, “What exactly is brave?” Sometimes they need a bit of help. They might come up with some concrete examples of their own. We start to put together a picture of what it is to be brave. “I can take the question “Does the hole in this doughnut exist?” to pretty much any age group.” Once we’ve come up with some kind of account of what bravery is, we’ll move back to the concrete question. I’ll say, ‘OK if bravery is X, Y and Z are Frog and Toad brave?’ I call this the Hokey Kokey [Pokey in the US] method, because it goes in (concrete), out (abstract) and in (concrete) again. It’s a really useful general principle for using stories with young children. It’s also very Socratic. Socrates would take concrete examples to test theories against. If someone came up with a definition — say of justice, beauty or courage — then they would have to come up with an example that might refute that. Sometimes we don’t stop them. After a story and asking a question, you always give them a few minutes to just talk. They need to do that. Then we come back to a structured approach, so we have a ball and various rules so that one person speaks at a time. My job is to try and get people to respond dialogically to each other. So if, for instance, somebody says ‘Yes I think they are brave because this, that and the other’ my next job is to find if there is someone who has a response of any kind to that comment. Or to find out if there is anybody who thinks they’re not brave. By facilitating in this way, the children, as a group, start to do what a philosopher does as an individual. This is really key to how we work. It’s connected to the Socratic idea of the silent dialogue, where a philosopher will be thinking of something in their own head and coming up with possible objections and problems and alternative views themselves — and then moving on to deal with those. What we do is get the children as a group to think through in a way that we might characterize as philosophy. And that will include the re-evaluative aspect. Children will often say, “I think bravery is this,” and then stop. But another child then picks up the baton, and says, “But what about this?” It might even be the first child who then responds back in defense of the first thesis. Or it might be another one. But the point is this dialogic movement is starting to happen. The children watch each other and the aim, hopefully, is for them to internalize this process so that, later on, they start to do the same thing in their own head. Many of these children will be engaging in some kind of silent dialogue themselves. The usual sign that they’re not engaging is if they’re being disruptive. Silent members are often encouraged, because if they’re sitting there silently, it’s usually a sign that they are engaging. But my job over time is to bring them out of themselves and get them to join in with the group. We find all sorts of things play a role in this: How shy a child is, what cultural influences they have from their backgrounds. For instance, some girls are very reluctant to speak because it’s not encouraged at home. My job is to try and find a way of drawing them all into the conversation. We have two aims: One is the dialogic philosophy building and the other is inclusion, trying to get as many children involved as possible. The key is to try and get the balance between those two: that they are all involved at the same time as there is some kind of linked, sequential movement in the discussion."