Moral education higher‐order thinking and philosophy for children

Abstract

Effective moral education requires that students actively engage in ethical inquiry, and ethical inquiry, in turn, requires that students cultivate all aspects of their thinking. The cultivation of higher‐order thinking requires that students become critical, creative and caring thinkers. The improvement of their critical thinking involves the strengthening of their logical and epistemological prowess as well as of their evaluative skills. Their creative thinking, involving discovering as well as inventing, is comprised of all inquiry processes, artistic and scientific, and includes perceptual thinking as a form of discovery. Caring thinking comprehends a wide variety of thinking types, including active thinking, affective thinking and valuative thinking. It is contended that only one discipline, philosophy, is capable of fostering the normative application of this broad spectrum of thinking modes. This is not the traditional, academic philosophy of the universities, but the narrative‐and‐discussion based doing of philosophy such as is to be found in the approach known as Philosophy for Children.

Key words:

• Higher order thinking
• young children
• philosophy