Some schools and even universities are advocating this program. Checkout Sue Knight at UniSA who along with her academic peers have recently launched a philosophy for kids association that educates educators how to deliver this content which is currently not taught by every Australian teacher.

Philosophy for children has been around for a few decades…check out Matthew Lipman’s work, however it appears that the Australian public education system is happy for Australian children to go through life being blissfully ignorant in the skills of rational logical argument as such ways of thinking like relativism are still alive and kicking and are not specifically targeted in curriculum frameworks! Philosophy for childen and ethics have only been included in teacher preparation courses in more recent times, but trying to get preservice teachers to ‘take it on’ when it isn’t mandated within the curriculum framework is a fight in itself.

Yes, i want my children to be literate and numerate, but i also want them to THINK rationally and logically.

So, in short i’m with you…what we need to do is get the great philosophy/ethics programs that are out there for children into the curriculum framework as a mandated curriculum area instead of leaving it up the will of individual schools or teachers.