WONDERING
A Journal of Philosophical Inquiry for, with, by Young People
A letter from Dr. Christopher Phillips
Dear friends, acquaintances, peers, supporters, kids, all others who are imbued with a sense of childlike (but by no means “childish”) wonder,
This is Christopher Phillips, the co-founder, along with my wife Ceci, of the nonprofit Democracy Café / Socrates Café. If you don’t know so much about who I am and who we are, please go to our nonprofit website at SocratesCafe.com.
But this message is not about us. It’s about our beloved friend and mentor, Mat Lipman, founder of Philosophy for Children.
Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children was published by the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, a non-profit educational institute at Montclair State University, from 1979 through 2014. It was a peer-reviewed forum for the work of theorists and practitioners of philosophical practice with children. It published philosophical argument and reflection, classroom transcripts, curricula, empirical research, and reports from the field. The journal also published articles in the hermeneutics of childhood, a field of intersecting disciplines including cultural studies, social history, philosophy, art, literature and psychoanalysis.
Mat himself, a proponent of clear and less forbidding writing, arguably would never have described his journal as such. But the important point is that his was a journal ahead of its time.
Ceci and I both were in the final cohort of students to graduate from Montclair State University with master’s degrees in the intensive, deeply unique, and meaningful teaching philosophy for children program. Mat Lipman himself was still presided over some courses during that time (I also took independent study courses with him, including on the philosophy of language and logic).
Following our graduation in 1997, we have established philosophical inquiry groups for children the world over, and even translated several books from our “Philosophers’ Club” and “Days of Wonder” series into indigenous languages, including Maya in Yucatán, in Tseltal and Tzotzil in Chiapas (where we lived, and where Ceci was a teacher in an indigenous Tseltal community).
A giant in the field of open philosophy
Now, we would like to announce that we have decided to start out a new multimedia online journal. Our aim to revive Mat’s rich and vital legacy.
We will call the multimedia online journal:
WONDERING: A Journal of Philosophical Inquiry for, with, by Young People.
I’m very fortunate to have written several pieces included in Mat’s lovely, one-of-a-kind journal Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children. Mat would sometimes pitch an idea to me; sometimes I’d pitch an idea to him. And then the hard, wonderful work would begin. One piece served as the precursor to a chapter for my international bestseller ‘Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy,’ which has been translated into 16 languages, most recently Arabic.
Mat’s was a very open kind peer journal — none of this “blind” peer review stuff, which critics, lay and scholarly, have recognized is woefully antithetical to fair and honorable reviewing. The blind peer review process, further, is virtually the antithesis of what Mat had in mind for his work.
Mat believed that clear writing, clear thinking, soaring philosophizing, go hand in glove.
Sadly, when university funding for Mat’s journal dried up, and it closed down.
The good news is that Ceci and I, and the nonprofit we co-founded, are up to the challenge of raising the standard once more. We don’t undertake anything in our more than a quarter of a century advancing the philosophical enterprise via our 501c(3) nonprofit SocratesCafe.com / DemocracyCafe.org for monetary reasons, but rather, because we love what we do.
A new era of wondering
No one inspired us more than Matthew Lipman. I was so touched and honored when Mat asked me to become the new executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children. “I don’t know anyone else who can do it,” he said to me at the time. But, by then, I was so immersed in my own projects, including the international bestseller “Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy” (for which Mat wrote a glowing encomium), that I would not have been able to do it justice. Luckily, Mat found someone far more worthy in the person of Dr. Maughn Gregory to carry on. Moreover, he, above all others, saw the initiatives that Ceci and I launched as kindred to all his own works, and he encouraged us, as he inimitably put it, to “carry on.”
One way we will carry on now, is to resuscitate and continue Mat Lipman’s legacy — a journal that features philosophizing with children that genuinely carries on with his mission in the way he envisioned. There is much too much pendaticism, impenetrable jargon, exclusion (much of it perpetrated from the blind peer review process, in our experience).
Like Mat, we fully agree that we need scholarship that is rich and multitextured and that is imbued with the wonder of children (rather than the too-often desiccated writing of academic scholastics. We need the input of an array of adult practical-scholarly peers across, and outside, the disciplines. And we need the philosophizing of kids themselves, through multimedia — writing (clear writing, creative writing, soaring writing), poetry, art, videos of philosophical discourses, and more. We need work in the realm of philosophy that can be deep and whimsical, methodical and poetic, perhaps all at once.
The goal of Wondering, as Ceci and I envision it, lends itself to the online format, and a creative, inclusive, uplifting multimedia approach.
Mat’s notion of “peer review” was one of sublimely open and inclusive collaboration. If you, as a peer, don’t like a piece, say so, say why, and identify who you are. Then help the person submitting craft something just right, if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.
We’ll have sundry peers (we’ll revolutionize the notion, in Mat’s spirit, of what a “peer” can, and debatably should, amount to), including children and youth whenever and wherever possible. We’ll often, maybe more often than not, just like Mat, simply approve a piece ourselves!
That’s our way. It was Mat’s way.
If you have something you’d like to submit, if you would like to be a direct part of this undertaking in any way, and perhaps and ideally in sundry way, please reach out to us at any time. We are officially open to all submissions as of this post!
In Mat’s spirit, determined to carry on with his mission and build on his legacy, we hope you will join us.
All very best,
Chris
