Check out this link. While celebrating my youngest’s 3rd birthday, I posed a question to a multilingual just-turned 8 year old Renaissance thinker. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a mini Socrates Cafe inquiry with him, what with his articulateness, keen sense of perspective and vision. Listen in as he differentiates between literal and emotional friendships (wish I’d explored this more with him, but my cellphone didn’t have enough memory for a long dialogue), and his beautiful elaboration of a friend as anyone, whether in the family or not, you spend time with, and you trust deeply, among other criteria.
Want more evidence? How about these videos featuring dialogues with my daughters? And these as well.
I wish I had more such videos, though I do have some more I can post. But I hope you’ll get a sense, after viewing this, of just how on the mark the premise of which my Philosophy of Childing is based. We simply have to quit selling short the extraordinary capacity of kids to reveal to themselves, and to us adults, stores of wisdom from which we all can benefit at every turn.
If you’re convinced, or at least halfway so, of how eye-opening kids’ philosophical insights can be, be sure to invite a healthy contingent of them to your next philosophical gathering.
If you do so, I suspect you’ll find the same thing that I’ve found in my long experience — that if there’s at least a few children and youth participating, adults also will be keener and more insightful participants. It’s not just that adults behave better when kids are present, but that they become more childlike in the best sense.
Happy Socratizing.