Creating counter-publics through deliberation in the classroom: The case of philosophy for children

In recent years, the ‘deliberative turn’ of political theory has travelled to the classroom. The predominant approach focuses on the ‘educative’ aspect of deliberation by simulating a fictional public debate in which students discuss controversial political questions given by adults. However, such practice tends to pay scant attention to the critical aspect of deliberation that enables students to challenge and examine unjust socio-political structures and dominant discourses in their lives. This article cautions that classroom deliberation without its critical edge makes deliberation more tokenistic and students less agentic. To show the democratic dynamics of critical classroom deliberation, this article draws insights from the author’s fieldwork on Philosophy for Children (P4C) implemented in two Japanese schools. The case study shows that students’ engagement in critical deliberation facilitated their creation of two types of counter-publics, namely, pedagogical and political, that helped them formulate counter-strategies and counter-voices differently.