This paper consists of some fragments from the writings of Gilles Deleuze that concern childhood. The goal here is not to illustrate a whole philosophical doctrine of childhood, but to present and make accessible to the readers some texts that may inspire them. Deleuze’s interest in childhood took many forms. He published a book for children with Jacqueline Duhême. Of course, this book was not written especially for children: it was composed of already-published texts from his earlier works. We also find childhood strongly represented in his autobiographical testimony Abécédaire, where it is one of the concepts upon which he comments. Beyond that and more generally, all of his work carries the motives of childhood—full of a childlike desire to rethink the the stereotypes and the commonplaces, and to wake up the spaces not yet thought in which the adult discourses of childhood and practices with children most often consist. We chose passages from numerous references, particularly Difference and Repetition, A Thousand Plateaus (composed with Félix Guattari), and the already cited Abécédaire. They are presented in chronological order. We also include transcripts from Deleuze’s classes at the University of Vincennes-Saint Denis (accessible at: http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/).

Traditionally, the negative way is a process by which the mental process ties to reach truth about its object through negation of what it is not rather than through affirmation of what it is. In dialectics, the negative moment is one where we examine critically a proposition though the affirmation of its contrary. But in philosophy as a pedagogy or as a practice, there is a tradition, like with Socrates, the cynics or the Zen master, which is more concerned about interrupting the mental process and obtaining silence than explaining. Philosophy has here little to do with “science,” and more with an ascetic conception of “being,” where one shows the absurdity of speech, common or erudite. Consciousness therefore becomes the condition and substance of truth, in a sort of antiphilosophy. Antiphilosophy which pretends to show and shock more than it pretends to tell and explain, is already very present and visible within philosophy itself, for example in the character of Socrates, and his devastating irony, this form of speech that says the contrary of what it says. The cynic, with its total lack of respect for anything and anyone, provides in this context an interesting historical example: it is the rare case of a philosophical school whose name is used as well as a moral condemnation. The XIV century Turkish figure Nasruddin Hodja has a lot do with this tradition. Although he inscribes himself in the Sufi current, he is primarily known through his numerous outrageous and funny stories, very popular all around the Mediterranean. But behind the comic surface of an oral tradition, we discover profound and provocative insights about the man, the world, language, truth, and many other subjects.

This paper proposes a discussion about the construction of aesthetic values by children. The discussion focuses on the relationship between preschool children and popular music. It considers their preferences, their opinion about the music that they hear and dance to, and their conceptions of childhood that is built on the interface with mass media’s implicit concepts. At a first sight—or first “hearing”—one may have the impression that some of these songs do not belong to the universe of childhood. If one looked for them in music shops or on websites that offer lyrics, chord notations or MP3 downloads, they certainly will not be found on shelves or links dedicated to “children’s music.” Even in the productions labeled “childish,” we find recordings of children’s groups miniaturizing famous adult groups, singing the same songs or remixes with childish patterns, assuming the same costumes and the same choreography. Many of those child groups were created for game shows and competitions inspired by the headhunters logic. Although these songs are not categorized as childish, children are in fact the target audience, and account for the largest number of viewers, a fact which suggests that we reflect seriously on the roles that children are taking on in the world of consumption. The central inquiry of this text is into the meanings that children attribute to this kind of musical production. This issue leads us to reflect on two other aspects of equal importance: the meaning that this type of production has in the field of art and, consequently, the meaning that art takes in the life of children. In the context of the culture industry (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1986) and of an age of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin, 1987), exposure becomes not only a fundamental criterion of appraisal of art, but in fact comes to define its condition.

In a situation of living-together such as an “ecole maternelle,” organized philosophical discussions help young children to construct their personalities in the context of the group, and thus promotes individual autonomy. This innovative methodology tends to promote in children skills of negotiation and capacities for self-restraint. It places the pupils in issue-situations that require working in groups, and coming to a reasoned understanding before proposing possible solutions. Philosophical discussions help children develop their own thinking processes, as well as increased fluency in oral communication, such that they can be better understood by and better understand others. This paper is divided between a description of our activities in the shape of workshops that determine everyone’s role in such discussions and provide experimental practice in the discourse; and an analysis of the experience itself, which identifies possible problems in implementation, and proposes solutions. We make it clear that we do not oppose the imaginary and syncretic thinking of children to a discourse about the “real” or the “reasonable,” since kindergarteners tend to live in a world that does not separate the two, and it would seem injudicious to arbitrarily cut children off from a natural form of concept exploration and psychological functioning. Rather, what is needed is to teach children to better control and navigate within their own thinking; this will not be a result of repressing the imaginary but rather of becoming conscious of their own poetic process, which develops in connection with the growth of reasoning and awareness.

This article elaborates a possible articulation between philosophy, Philosophy for Children and philosophy of education through the concept of teaching. Philosophy for Children permits the discovery not only of the philosophical origins of the methodological tools used commonly in education, but their proper philosophical use. Moreover, Philosophy for Children makes evident the inner relation between philosophy itself and the phenomenon of teaching. On these grounds, and through the understanding of what constitutes philosophical education in real terms, one could adumbrate as well the role that a philosophy of education could undertake. The examples of the critical thinking movement, of the construction of inter-disciplinary thematic curricula, or of creative learning and teaching show to what extent, implicitly and in diverse ways, philosophy is central to the educational mechanism, or is needed for the function of this very mechanism. Nonetheless, at the same time, Greek educational reality marginalizes philosophy, a contradiction that could be worked out by the introduction of Philosophy for Children in the school. This very introduction requires a new kind of understanding and exercise of philosophy, but it also requires a mediator to work from the side of philosophy of education.

In this paper we use Husserl’s theory of perception to explore how child and adult perception works through the same mechanisms. First, we explore Husserl’s description of sensory perception, showing that the child, like the adult, will be able to enrich the total perception of the object through access to successive appearances of an object. Next, we explore how the child’s ability to perceive objects can be enriched in complex ways, showing that an adult or a child will both be able to access a greater ‘enduring entity’ of the object. Finally, we consider the child’s ability to remember their perceptions through memory, showing how the child and the adult use the ego’s intentionality, rather than active remembering, as a component of the memory of a perception.

If there is one constant, uninvited guest in the typical public school classroom—or indeed in any setting in which children gather in numbers—it is conflict. The transcripts from which I draw in this reflection on how young children think together about conflict reflect two four-part sets of conversations with two second grades in a small school of roughly 300 students in a predominantly middle to upper middle class suburban town in a heavily populated metropolitan area in the northeastern U.S. Most of the examples of conflict which the second graders chose to offer were located in their lives with friends or acquaintances or siblings, or incidents among adults that they had witnessed. There seemed to be a level of tolerance, even expectation and affirmation of these small conflicts in their lives; they had already become relatively “natural” occurrences for them. Large sections from four of the transcripts are included here, with commentary. In the first, conflict is represented by the group as a competition, either between two people or two possibilities only one of which can be fulfilled (the “fork in the road”). There is disagreement as to whether interpersonal conflict can be avoided. The second section revolves around the reorganizational or reconstructive potential of conflict. The third section takes up the question of whether we can say that there is conflict within nature beyond just living things — i.e. whether conflict can be considered a metaphysical or at least ontological principle. Transcript and analysis of arguments are accompanied by reflections on the differing social atmospheres of the two classes, their possible relationships to the discussion styles of the two, and on the possibility of a form of pedagogy which allows for the self-organizing character of group life and the role of conflict in the dialectics of development.

The official and politically correct language of the educational world consistently insists on the importance of learning to think during the period of formal and compulsory education. Returning to a basic principle of political life, possibly as old as mankind but more clearly declared in forms of democratic organization, we cannot understand a democracy without the existence of an educated and informed citizenry, able to think for itself in confrontation with options and world conceptions different from its own. Intelligence - understood as the ability of people to develop abstract thinking and reasoning, to understand complex ideas, solve problems and overcome obstacles, learn from experience and adapt to the environment - is the most valuable attribute that we have. Reasoning well, therefore, is essential to all human beings, both in relation to their personal lives and in the relations we have living in society. Despite this, there are several mistakes that we make when thinking, when we make decisions or solve problems, both in our everyday lives and in decisions about social and political issues of a general nature. So it is necessary to improve our ability to reason in general, with emphasis on formal and informal reasoning. This improvement is a fundamental goal of education, although in practice it has not received enough attention. In order to achieve this, the implementation of programs of learning to think are required, including the Philosophy for Children program, which involves one of the most solid and consistent proposals on this subject. The program uses the Western philosophical tradition, focusing on the quality of the arguments during discussions of the classical themes of philosophy, all considered within the framework of the school converted into a community of inquiry.