Celebrating everything at the same time
In a pluralist society it seems right, or self-evident, to celebrate diversity: cultural, aesthetic, sexual, ethnic, religious, political etc. What else to do in a society that houses people and cultures from the entire world? At the same time, celebrating something usually means to let it stand out at the expense of something else. To celebrate is to differentiate, to exclude in order to be able to prioritise. But how can we “celebrate diversity” if diversity simply means the inclusion of everything and everybody? How can we give priority to everything at the same time?
Of course, it is not possible. To prioritise everything is to prioritise nothing. Nonetheless, we are very much expected today to celebrate and embrace diversity as such, not a certain part of it. To promote particular parts of the whole is considered authoritarian and/or discriminating, for instance if you say that an adult’s opinion is more valuable than the opinion of a child. But the strange thing is that the opposite claim, that the child’s opinion is more valuable than the adult’s—despite being just as biased in the specificity of its embracing—would typically be regarded not authoritarian or discriminating but instead as an expression of perfect respect and tolerance. Apparently, it is not the promotion of certain parts of the whole that is the problem but the promotion of the wrong parts.
To “celebrate diversity” is like celebrating a utopian dream of universal harmony; no matter how beautiful the dream it is impossible to make it come true. If you try, and many do try, you tend to end up with double standards: on the one hand supporting the abstract and absolute principle of unity and equality in diversity, on the other hand pursuing your own interests just like everybody else.
The power to empower
As we all know, children are at home in the world of dreams and fantasy. But their fantasies are never prescriptive, never political or utopian. Their fantasies are just vivid, playful, spontaneous and discontinuous. However, children are also fully able to pursue their own interests, indeed, they can be brutal egoists. Still, they are never ashamed of the fact. They entertain no double standards.
Children’s shamelessness and blatant amorality has always been a thorn in the flesh of the responsible adult. The counter move has been the exercising of power. Since the grown-up is older, bigger and stronger than the child, since he knows and understands more and is more experienced—and since the child is at the mercy of his care and protection—he has all the power he needs to govern the child, to implant in it desired attitudes and behaviours. Traditionally there has been nothing wrong in the exercising of such a power. On the contrary, it would have been deemed irresponsible not to exercise it.
Today, ‘power’ and ‘children’ are mutually exclusive concepts. This, however, does not mean that adults have stopped using power in regard to children but that the power has taken another form. Many adults today are fervent proponents of children’s equality, therefore they seek to distribute as much power, responsibility and authority to children as possible. Not only are adults willing to abdicate from power themselves, they also transfer power to the child in order to “empower” it.
This sounds admirable, perhaps. But don’t forget that this is an abdication from and transfer of power that children themselves have never asked for. Also, the transfer is impossible to carry out without at the same time ignoring or covering up very real differences between adults and children: acquired knowledge, life experience, linguistic skills, maturity, power of judgement, practical competencies, impulse and body control etc. One must somehow make people believe that these differences are irrelevant and hence ignore that these are capabilities and qualities that take considerable time and effort to develop. So, the power abdication and transfer project is in fact a highly manipulating project. But it appears wholly benign and caring thanks to the irresistible nobility of its goal: the celebration of diversity and the empowerment of the weak.
We can gauge the strength of this manipulatory power when someone is accused of “disenfranchising” a child, for instance by omitting to let it have its say in matters where adults used to be the sole person in charge. An adult who says to the child: “You have no qualified opinion in this matter; therefore I will decide!”, will immediately face a wall of prejudice: “You are prejudiced!” (sic!), “You are a self-aggrandising bigot!”, “You have no empathy with others!” and so on and so forth. Any argument that might recast the on-going process of the “empowerment” of the child is willy-nilly deported to the comfortable blind zone.
The national pre-school curriculum provides interesting illustrations. Here it is declared that children have a right to “active participation in the planning and evaluation of the running of the pre-school.” No less. But there is no mention of reasons that might stifle such comprehensive augmentation of the rights of the child. As if there were a moral duty to summon all and sundry—regardless of age, background, interests or qualifications, and, again, regardless of the actual wishes of the child itself—to make plans for, and criticise, the institution. As if knowledge, experience and qualifications were totally irrelevant when it comes to planning and evaluation; indeed, as if planning and evaluation were improved the less knowledge and qualification is involved.
Celebrating one thing at a time
The notion of equality in diversity is intrinsically linked to a relativistic world-view where there are no clear-cut borders between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, honourable and shameless, between that which promotes and solidifies and that which decimates and destructs. The main argument in favour of relativism and that is that it will eliminate prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping once and for all, by nipping in the bud all undesired tendencies and attitudes. In reality, all that happens is that old preconceived notions and stereotypes are swapped with fresh ones.
For example, in the old days many people entertained the preconceived idea that there is such a thing as “low culture”. Presently, this is exchanged with the preconceived idea that there is no distinction between high and low culture. One used to say: “This is utter garbage! This, on the other hand, is fine art!” Now one says: “One is not entitled to call anything garbage! All art is interesting and worthwhile in its own way!” (The mere fact that we put the word “low culture” in quotes bears witness to an internalised fear for being taken literally and therefore being branded intolerant, that is to say, to become victimised by the fresh set of prejudices—and the stigmatisation and ousting that follows.)
Among the many dangers of relativism is its propensity to undermine, subconsciously as it were, any enquiry that supports the notion that some ideas, attitudes or actions are preferable to others. Moreover, in a relativistic political climate the strongest argument has no chance of gaining ground, whereas any proposal that undermines discriminative, dichotomous thinking will prevail. Children and young people are, unwittingly, manacled to a culture of communication where the main point is, not to make a clear distinction between the good and the bad, but to show “respect and tolerance” for both.
So, we would like to ask: are there any arenas left for children where the communication is governed neither by the power to repress nor by the power to empower, arenas where it is possible to celebrate one thing at a time (the part) without being automatically accused of naïvety or prejudice, where differences, dissimilarities and distinctions are not swept under the carpet but are regarded important contributions to a common enquiry of a common reality?
The philosophical dialogue is such an arena.
The philosophical dialogue
A philosophical dialogue is a form of enquiry that an increasing number of pre-schools, primary and secondary schools, museums and other children institutions gravitate towards. It is inspired by Socrates of the Greek antiquity. In his famous dialogues with the people of Athens, written down by his no less famous pupil Plato, the interlocutors gain new insights by learning how to analyse and justify their claims and opinions. Also, in the dialogue we put aside our own particular interests in order to get a better grip of the other’s thoughts, indeed, to strengthen the argument of the ones with which we disagree. Another important lesson from Socrates (and the basis for his irony) is the knowing of not knowing (“enlightened ignorance”). We need input from others in order to deepen our knowledge of our not-knowledge.
But when today’s education institutions so happily espouse “philosophical dialogue” it is hardly the Socratic legacy that emboldens them. A look at philosophical practise in recent years (and at the “philosophy for children” programme) demonstrates that it is neatly interwoven with the cultural matrix of the 1960s, and it is the progressive (destructive and deconstructive) spirit of this tumultuous decade that defines not just politics and pedagogics but practical and theoretical philosophy too. As a consequence, there is a frontal assault on the school whose hitherto allegedly one-sided emphasis on the dissemination of knowledge, facts, values and ingrained traditions has led to the neglect and suppression of children’s subjectivity, thinking and life orientation. The slogans are revealing: “the child in the centre” (cf. child-centred pedagogy) and “death to the abuse/authority/power of the adult” (as if authority is abuse). The Swedish feminist Ellen Key certainly got it right when she predicted that the twentieth century would become “the century of the child”.
However, what the feminists, pedagogues and other progressive front fighters failed to observe in their “philosophical” worship of the child is the notorious treacherousness of philosophy. They believed that religion may be substituted by philosophy which in turn will produce an irrevocable verification of the ideal: equality in diversity. To their surprise it turns out that philosophical thinking shows little veneration for pre-established truths. When, for example, a child, encouraged by the adult’s constant pleading for the child to express itself, asks why it is more fair for three persons to get what they want instead of one, pedagogues tend to wake up. The child can no longer be put off by mere reference to the fact that majority rules in a democracy. The child just retorts that the one may be right while the three may be wrong. And indeed, democracy and truth sometimes go in opposite directions, democracy can build on falseness and lies as it lends ear to the opinion of the majority rather than to the voice of truth.
The child thus homes in on two opposite concepts that for many intellectuals are highly suspect: true and false. For most adults it is unlikely, bordering to the absurd, that one person should possess truth whilst three other persons are completely in the wrong. “Is it not usually the case that everyone has got some things right and some things wrong?” they ask alluringly, begging the question. They always prefer to view cases from as many sides as possible, partly to avoid being labelled a bigot, partly to appear smart and street-wise. But in this case clearly it is the child who is smart: he allows his thought to work unhindered, uncluttered by habitual conceptions and prevailing political correctness.
Critical power—the power of demarcation
A philosophical dialogue is “child-centred” as it is the children’s thoughts and ideas we wish to explore, just as Socrates was midwife to the birth of his interlocutor’s, not his own, ideas. The child, therefore, determines the what of the dialogue. So far so good, whether one subscribes to the ancient or the progressive view of philosophical practise. Disagreement abounds, however, as soon as it comes to the role of the adult: is the adult supposed to exercise some sort of power over the child or is it rather his mandate to distribute power to the child, that is to say, to empower it?
But this is a false dilemma. In a philosophical dialogue the adult has, and must have, power—not over the child as an individual but in order to secure the progression and result of the philosophical exchange. It is, therefore, the adult who decides the how of the dialogue. It is his obligation to have participants analyse important concepts and give reasons for propositions, avoid one-sidedness and unfairness, be relevant, identify and correct contradictions, fallacious argumentation etc.
These are some of the basic ingredients of critical thinking. Anyone wanting to promote it must exercise critical power or critical authority. Essential to such power is discrimination and prioritisation, the weeding out of irrelevancy, knowing the difference between what can be said and what ought to be said, expressing oneself in brief and speak loudly so that everyone can hear, putting one’s inner world at bay in order to listen apprehensively to questions and objections, even welcoming interruption if elaborating one’s point too much; in short, knowing and accepting one’s limitations, submitting to the power of demarcation.
Now, is this not just an intellectual variant of the power adults have over children being bigger and stronger than they? Not at all. Firstly, the child has a corresponding power to limit the adult by deciding the topic of the exchange. The adult, the leader of the dialogue, cannot introduce his own topics at will; then he is no longer a midwife but has started to give birth on his own. And this is the reason why the child is not weak and the adult strong in the dialogue. Both are weak or both are strong since both have separate roles to play in the timeless love drama that is philosophy (remember that the word “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”). Is Romeo stronger than Juliet? Are they not both actors in a big drama that none of them has directed?
Secondly, the purpose of exercising the power of demarcation is for the child to reach freedom, not subordination. Power and freedom are only in opposition to each other when the purpose of power is to empower one party at the expense of the other. When the purpose of the power is to advocate something that stands over and above both parties—the drama itself, the philosophical enquiry, the search of truth—power/authority is a precondition for freedom rather than its antithesis (provided it is true that greater insight and self-knowledge gives more freedom).
The employment of power/authority in order to teach the child the art of limitation and demarcation—to teach it how to clear a path in the endless diversity by exercising discrimination, temperance and self-discipline, how to distance itself from acute urges and interests so that it can more easily resist inner and outer compulsion, how to deliberate and make well-founded and unselfish choices—is a necessary condition for the child to develop into a free, independent and responsible human being.
Kissing the frog
A society where inclusiveness, diversity and equality are non-negotiable virtues will necessarily entertain a more or less overt scepticism towards philosophy, partly because philosophy is unfaithful and ungovernable, partly because philosophy pursues depth, not inclusiveness, because its outreach is latitudinal rather than longitudinal, because it rips more apart than it brings together. Philosophy is thus potentially dangerous to a regime that has the power, and the willingness, to reshape reality in its own image. Philosophy threatens to dismantle the close political bonds between vision and reality, in the name of non-political truth. This is how philosophy, and, indeed, the human mind works.
It is, of course, possible to say thanks, but no thanks to the offerings of philosophy. One can, not entirely without reasonableness, avert the pledge by saying: “No thank you, we do not want to let loose such an undermining force in our society.” Just as it is perfectly acceptable for the princess to abstain from kissing the frog on the grounds that it looks dreadful. Or is it?
