Philosophy in Schools Readings

Philip Cam, 2023, Thinking as Method, Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, vol. 43, no. 1

The always insightful Philip Cam writes here about thinking as the method, goal, and purpose of education and provides a pathway to achieving it in schools.

John Dewey is well-known for claiming that school education is all about developing the ability to think. There is nothing else for schools to do so far as students’ minds are concerned. Thinking is not only the aim of education for Dewey, however, but the means of achieving it. This is not because it is the method to be preferred. Rather, as Dewey understands it, thinking is method so far as intelligent learning is concerned. In ‘Thinking as Method’ I examine these extraordinary claims and show how Dewey’s own discipline of philosophy provides a model for them.