irony and caring thinking in philosophy for children

The practice of philosophical dialogue as proposed by the Philosophy for Children program requires that this dialogue begin in primary school, and even earlier. Philosophical dialogue, based on the model of the Socratic dialogues, requires the development of critical thinking, cognitively very demanding, FpN, from its origins, insists that such thinking must be linked to creative and caring thinking, understood as thinking that takes into account the ethical dimension of rigorous dialogue. For this very reason, the program stresses that education is an ethical endeavor, it is intrinsically moral. This is expressed in the effort to turn the classroom into a community of philosophical inquiry, with the ethical commitments that any community of inquiry demands. But the community of inquiry is applied in a context in which there is an asymmetrical relationship between students and teachers, which requires special attention on the part of teachers in how they facilitate dialogue. The use of fundamental resources in dialogue such as radical questioning and irony must be governed by this claim of equality. The philosophical community of inquiry must prefigure from the outset a genuine community of dialogue among equals, governed by critical, creative and careful thinking.