Philosophy for Children and Social Inquiry: An Example of Education for Democratic Citizenship through Political Philosophy

This study aims to present content and methodology on how to teach citizenship skills by means of philosophical inquiry. In education for democratic citizenship, there are two perspectives. One is rights-based citizenship education and the other is responsibility-based citizenship education. Along with a number of changes, communitariansim, which puts an emphasis on the importance of rights and responsibilities in a community, came to the front as an alternative to the other two. Active citizenship and political participation, concepts that are also important to thinkers like Dewey, Freire, and Crick, aim to develop the autonomous side of the individual which is usually overlooked by education systems and it is in line with this new point of view. However, there is a lack of approach which can reflect this new perspective on education. This study discusses the combination of education for democratic citizenship and philosophy education in terms of providing a solution to this problem. In this scope, the new vision of citizenship is dealt with and ideas on education for citizenship are presented in a comparative manner. Content of political philosophy and education for democratic citizenship are linked in the context of active citizenship and political participation. In the study, it is argued that P4C Programme, developed by Lipman, would be appropriate for education for citizenship as it transforms philosophy, which is usually heavily burdened with academic terminology, into philosophical inquiry. The nature of social inquiry and P4C will serve as a catalyser in establishing the relationship between political philosophy and education for democratic citizenship. In the conclusion part, a perspective is presented on how some relevant terms should be handled in the context of P4C.