Kids Meet author Brendan O’Donoghue, and win Mary Poppins Returns goodies!
Imagine waking up tomorrow with everyone begging you to come up with rules to make the world work – what would you do? In his great new illustrated book, Adventures in Philosophy,
Brendan O’Donoghue has some ideas about how young people might make their world work. He tells us about philosophy for kids
“When I started this book, I wanted it to draws people, both kids and adults, into philosophy, a sort of an introduction to philosophy with stories that show how renowned and innovative thinkers have thought about the world or about things like courage, arti cial intelligence, politics and our relationship with the Earth.
I’ve always thought that philosophy is hugely important as a way of developing the ability to think for oneself, to broaden and deepen our sense of wonder at the world and to maybe change how we behave. e way we are living now is unsustainable and we’re going to need radical ways of changing our behaviour if we want to continue.
I think children actually have a greater capacity than adults for that sort of critical thinking – by the time we reach adulthood, we have developed habitual ways of thinking about the world, whereas for me – as a primary school teacher – children are more open to absorbing ideas quickly, but also to shedding new light on problems, In fact, they think about things in ways that have never occurred to me. We should give kids more credit for their ability to think in innovative ways. It’s important to give them platforms to discuss the big issues and problems the world is facing, whether it’s our way of living on the planet or the challenges of technology or the nature of the human mind. Rather than a book of ‘dead white European males’ telling people how to think, I hope the ideas in the book serve to kick-start thinking and talking about all sorts of things by themselves. In no way do I want to instil particular ideas in kids’ heads – I want to open up questions in their minds about the serious issues the world faces.
In the course of writing the book, I was just astonished by how quickly kids can grasp a new idea. For example, one of the thought experiments in there is John Rawle’s Veil of Ignorance, in which you imagine yourself in a hospital bed wrapped in bandages and you don’t know your gender, nationality or your economic status and you then have to come up with the rules for running a fair society. Kids just thrive on those kinds of ‘what if ’ thoughts. From that leaping o point, they so o en come up with systems that are basically communism or capitalism, without even realising that is what they are.
I hope that discovering philosophy gives kids a deeper perspective on the environmental crisis or the advent of arti cial intelligence – these are this generation’s most urgent issues and kids will need the tools to come up with ways of dealing with them. e solutions won’t just come from philosophy though; they will have to come from philosophy in dialogue with engineers and scientists.”
Adventures in Philosophy by Brendan O’Donoghue, illustrated by Paula McGloin (published by Gill Books) is in bookshops now.