Who was Matthew Lipman and what were his contributions?

Matthew Lipman He was a philosopher whose main contributions were in the field of pedagogy. Lipman was born in the United States on August 24, 1922 and his work on Philosophy for Children is currently applied in more than 50 countries around the world.

It is a way of teaching that aims to give more autonomy to children, providing them with critical thinking.

Who was Matthew Lipman and what were his contributions?

In order to elaborate his theory he based himself on the works of the also American John Dewey , who tried to reform the mode of conservative teaching that was taking place in his country and put the focus on the needs of children, giving them tools to be able to think for themselves.

Biography of Matthew Lipman

Matthew Lipman was born in Vineland, New Jersey in 1922. He was a professor at Columbia University when he began to consider the need to change the teaching methodology of the time.

More specifically, it was during Vietnam War , when he noticed the limited ability of his contemporaries to capture complex thoughts and express their opinions.

For this philosopher, it was already late to endow adults with a critical and analytical mind, so he began to work on a new pedagogy for children.

From there, he founded the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for children. His methodology was implemented for the first time in several public schools in New Jersey.

Lipman is also the author of several books in which he develops his theories and the methodology associated with his proposal. Among these highlights"The discovery of Harry Stottlemeyer, the first he published. It is intended for children of 10 years

After being able to expand his thinking to more than 50 countries, Lipman died on December 26, 2010 in West Orange, also in New Jersey.

Philosophy for children

Faced with the dominant theories at the time, which considered that children were unable to have complex thoughts before they were 10 or 11 years old, the author thought that they acquired this ability much earlier.

Likewise, he was against the prevailing educational model. This boosted the rote teaching, forgetting the logical and reasoning abilities of the children.

Thus, he was convinced that they were able to have abstract thoughts from a very young age, which led him to raise the need to begin philosophical education much earlier to improve reasoning ability.

Development of critical and democratic thinking

To reach his didactic objectives, Lipman resorted to philosophy in its most primary meaning: to consider the why of things and facts.

Through books intended for children and manuals for teachers, he developed a complete teaching guide in order to teach students to think.

His ultimate goal was that reason and critical thinking were more important than memory. In this way, children end up having a greater capacity to better understand reality.

It also improves the ability to understand the way of thinking of others and to strive to build a better society and work for the common good.

Thanks to that, Lipman pretended not to lose the freedom of thought and, in short, democratic values.

References

  1. Mexican Federation of Philosophy for Children. Matthew Lipman Retrieved from fpnmexico.org
  2. HOIST. Philosophy for Children. Retrieved from izar.net
  3. Martin, Douglas. Matthew Lipman, Philosopher and Educator, Dies at 87. Retrieved from nytimes.com
  4. Lipman, Matthew. Philosophy in the Classroom. Retrieved from files.eric.ed.gov
  5. The Philosophy Foundation. Philosophy for Children. Retrieved from philosophy-foundation.org


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