In this excerpt Giorgio Agamben analyzes the relationship between childhood, play, and signification. Importantly, he argues that children play a unique role in social renewal precisely because of their precarious location between death and the political life of the adult. Agamben’s sustained interest in childhood is part of his overall project which concerns the ethical witnessing of the remnant that exists between binary terms such as life and death, nature and culture, human and animal. It is this interval, which both connects and separates oppositions, that Agamben locates the potentiality necessary to rethink politics, linguistics, and society itself.

This study deals with an exploratory research about understanding of art in students of different age, grades and kind of schools attended. In particular, we analysed how beliefs and reflections about art and aesthetical experiences expressed during a cross-age interview, changed in elementary school children involved for two years in a UE Project (Socrates - Comenius, Action 1) titled “Philosophy and European Contemporary Art”. The activities are based on guided philosophical discussions, transforming the classroom in a “community of inquiry”, according to the methodology of “Philosophy for Children” program (Lipman, Sharp, & Oscanyan, 1980). The elementary school group was tested pre and post the program activities. A qualitative analysis of the students’ answers was carried out, considering the data with respect to the five stages of art understanding defined by Micheal Parsons (1990) which correspond to different beliefs about art in the subjects.

This article describes the evolution of diverse group philosophical practices from their origins (Socratic dialogue, Philosophy for Children), in which a uniform methodology dominates, to actuality (Philosophy with Children, Philosophical Cafes, or the New Philosophical Practices) in which there exists a great variety of methodologies and perspectives. The author defends the plurality and the diversity of philosophical workshops, whether they be inside or outside of the classroom.

The present investigation directs itself towards the individualization of a possible area of intersection between the Philosophy for Children curriculum and the world of Kinetic Sciences? This trajectory follows two lines of inquiry. The principal arises from an analysis of the person as a live body, as a body that expresses through movements characteristics of rationality and intentionality. A particular focus on how and on what role the body “subject” is engraved in the typical philosophy for children context. Along these lines, to support such an analysis, we compare the philosophy for children curriculum with other educational contexts. The second line of research, which is only sketched here, establishes a relationship with an analysis of the body “object” of discussion in the philosophy for children curriculums.

Of Jewish-German origin, Jona Oberski was born in Amersterdam. During the Nazi rule that coincided with her childhood she was arrested by the Germans and deported to the Bergen-Belsin concentration camp after having also spent time in the Westerbork camp. While at Belsen her father died at the camp, and her mother later died in 1945, after the liberation. Oberski was adopted by a couple from Amsterdam, and years later dedicated herself to the studying of Physics, the area in which she currently works. Through the lens of a little protagonist, and the “ignorant” lens of the infancy of the atrocious reality in which it lives preserves only some details, impressions, and lived experiences that are narrated as if they had occurred in the present, even though they have passed. This article enters into this dialogic process and tries to establish new beginnings, negating or affirming old standards and models, notions and visions, questioning and answering old and new questions.

This article search, from a situation of classroom, to interpret the reality of the processes of felt learning and constitution of a child in initial phase of acquisition of the written language. This passage will be constructed from the notion of similarity, language and experience in Benjamin and Agamben. For in such a way the one notion `inversion' of logic in the frequent way that we think the education and that we look at the school seems necessary, in this perspective some axles if they become central offices, (1) the first one is a look on the knowledge idea and to learn (2) as in relation the notion of `to teach finally' and third, (3) from an approach on infancy and a look on the film “The Villa” of Shiamallan, appears a necessity of ‘pedagogy of childhood’, that is, the indicative for walking for an education that of the pedagogy inferiorly.

Throughout the world there exist communities of extreme poverty in which children do not have access to school and hardly benefit from childhood rights established by the United Nations. The community of inquiry is a philosophical practice that allows us to reach these children and initiate them into democratic practices through philosophical dialogue and the development of critical and creative thinking. In this article we ask: “What are the challenges and/or the tasks that philosophic practice in such communities of extreme poverty are able to confront?”

In the Greek educational mechanism, the teaching of philosophy remains marginalized. On the other hand, a whole range of educational programs (for example, those of environmental education, education for democracy, e.t.c.) seem to be imbued with philosophical elements, even if the contribution of philosophy there is indirect and in fact supplementary and supporting. In the same time, the philosophy of the educational system itself is also imbued with “philosophical” values in the style of the new common European values. A real integration of philosophical practices in Greek school, an integration also of Philosophy for Children, involves necessarily a whole new design of the integration of philosophy itself (in its different aspects) in the Greek educational system (through its different grades as seen in their interrelation). This design ought to be based on a new systematic conception of philosophy, especially against the new pressures exerted by education.

In this article, presented at the Colloque sur nouvelles pratiques philosophiques (Unesco-Paris, November, 2006), we offer an introduction to the Aion Space, an research extension project of the University of Brasilia, DF, Brasil. AION constitutes a space/time for reflection, practice and communication in Philosophy, the Humanities and Arts. AION is a multi-purpose space that promotes a collective philosophical reflection on psychological, historical, social, anthropological, and artistic themes. AION seeks to become a mobile space that travels to the communities of the DF region. AION is a space of resistance to the naturalization of the universal human, and it investigates different possibilities and ways for women, men and children to relate to each other and live.

This study attempts to describe and analyze the question of teacher formation in Philosophy for Children by focusing on two central principles: the first is that we defend the introduction of philosophy into elementary schools; the second that we place greater emphasis on current programs of teacher formation in the field. We begin the article by analyzing the work and research of the creator and pioneer of the program Philosophy for Children, Matthew Lipman. The article proceeds to inquire into and describe the teacher formation efforts in the field in Brasil, mainly those of the Brasilian Center of Philosophy for Children (CBFC) and some alternative efforts coordinated by Walter Kohan and Paula Ramos de Oliveira. A general overview of teacher formation and the teaching profession in Brasil is also conducted. The theoretical base, from which we analyze the concept of formation, is built on the Frankfurt School, particularly Theodor W. Adorno’s texts on education, formation, and semi-formation.