Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

more when the bath is full?
    17 Is saying ‘I don’t know’ better than guessing?
    18 Can a good person choose not to go to heaven (should it exist)?
    19 Is refusing to be weak the same as being strong?
    20 Could a nun disguise herself as a nun?
    I also spoke at a recent
TEDx
conference in Dubai where ‘Thunks’ went down very well with a very mixed audience. 6 I do not share all this ‘Thunking’ with you to blow my own pedagogical trumpet but to underline just how much interest there is in having children think for themselves, how much controversy it causes, how simple it is to achieve, how much fun can be had doing it and, above all, to urge you to have a go with any group of children and see what happens.
    One thing I can guarantee will happen is that they will not respond how you think they will. Every time I have worked in this way – and I mean
every
time – there is a child who, during the session, is brilliant. They are eloquent, they are forceful, they are persuasive, they are intelligent, theyare creative, they are confident. It is only afterwards, when the teachers who have been observing feed back to me, that I discover that that child never normally speaks in lessons. It is a phenomenon that other teachers have witnessed for themselves on countless occasions when they play around with
P4C
themselves. I think one of the big reasons it happens in this way so consistently is to do with the nature of the ‘rules of engagement’ as set up in step two above – you can’t be wrong. By taking out the threat of failure that exists whenever thoughts are either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, what you are left with is just ‘thoughts’.
And everyone has thoughts.
It makes me wonder how many children go through their entire school careers not joining in for fear of getting it wrong? What’s more, taking right or wrong out of the picture is a lot more effective than simply telling a group to ‘have a go, it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong’. Getting it wrong in front of their peers is as world-endingly embarrassing for them as it is for you.
    On the subject of ‘joining in’ something else to bear in mind when working this way is that participants don’t have to speak to participate. It’s about ‘thinking skills’ not about ‘talking skills’. (Talking skills are improved, but only as a sideline to the main event. Research in Scotland also shows that
P4C
improved IQ scores of a group of five- to eleven-year-olds by 6.5 points and that this improvement was maintained into their secondary education, despite the fact that they were no longer doing it. 7 The most surprising aspect is that it continued after the lessons stopped at secondary school. The saddest aspect is that the lessons stopped at secondary school.) One of the shy girls from one group I was working with (and for more information on
P4C
and self-esteem see chapter 16 ) was telling me afterwards that she wanted to be a barrister and that she felt that developing her thinking in this way was really useful. When I asked her about whether being quiet during the sessions was an issue she said categorically that it wasn’t. She did join in, just not out loud. What she liked to do was sit there and listen to other people’s points of view and reflect on them internally. Having to speak would actually get in the way of her own thinking. What I also find, and I’m thinking of certain boys here in particular, those who talk the most are usually the ones who think the least. This is where the
P4C
technique of always ending a session by going around the circle and asking each member to come up with one sentence to sum up what’s been going through their head, is useful. It is here where you are met with the ‘My brain hurts’ responses, although another one that often crops up relates to the surprise many children experience at realizing that people have different opinions from each other.
    My favourite response, though, in all the years I have been doing this, and a line that is testimony to the power of the process, was from a nine-year-old boy who summed up a session with me by saying:
    I’ve just realized how big life is.
    Something to remember when trying to encourage thinking with your students, whether it is in a specific thinking skills lesson or even in a traditional subject-based session, relates to the power of silence. Often the teacher response, when a question they have posed is met with silence, is to panic. The