Philosophy for Children (P4C)

P4C is a methodology that develops, enhances and enriches thinking and questioning skills. It is a discipline concerns with logical, critical and reflective thinking and the development of reasoning. It emphasis on process rather than the end result. P4C encourages children to think and share their opinions with others.

P4C encourages collaboration by thinking, discussing, and cooperative working to build communication and conversional skills. Besides, it enables caring as P4C is regards as an excellent thinking tool through healthy debate, social responsibility and moral citizenship. Moreover, it builds children’s confidence, self-awareness, motivation and emotional strength through reasoned and good judgement in everyday life.

There is a formal structure for P4C. Children have to sit in a semi-circle, horseshoe or circle. Then, the facilitator will decide on rules. There will be 2 minutes warm-up session to make the children focus. After that, stimulus will be presented. The children will be given thinking time, depending on their age. The more time given, the more idea will be generated. Finally is the discussion session. For this session, the children will talk and express their ideas or opinion about the topic given. Usually, the optimum time for each session is about ¾ of an hour to an hour.  

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As a conclusion, P4C is good and beneficial for children nowadays as it promotes children to think in order to make even a simple decision in their life. If all children are trained with P4C from their early age, social problems and social illnesses which happen among teenagers might be lesser as they have been practiced to think deeply before making any decision in their life.