Vale Ann Margaret Sharp – 1942-2010

In other words, Philosophy for Children does not tell the child what to think: ultimately that is up to the child. What it does do is give children the intellectual, social and emotional tools that they need to think well, to think judiciously and reasonably and, by means of the classroom community of inquiry, fosters the care, commitment and courage to act on their thinking. Ann Margaret Sharp, 2004.

It is 2010 and I’m in Sydney, just up the road from the University of New South Wales. Yesterday, we were told at the start of the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations (FAPSA) Conference that our ‘keynote presenter’, Ann Margaret Sharp, would not be joining us for her presentation on ‘Is there a spiritual dimension to Philosophy For Children‘, which was to focus on behaviours of communal philosophical inquiry as participants embody critical, creative and caring thinking.

In 2004, I attended a Level 2 training course in Philosophy for Children. It was hosted at a monastery (interestingly enough!) – St Clements Retreat Centre located in Galong NSW. I was a student with about fifteen other teachers, attending lectures and workshops run by practioners like Phillip Cam (Associate Professor in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of NSW), Catherine Geraghty-Slavica (SOPHY), and there were sessions by a special overseas presenter – Ann Margaret Sharp.

She was the Associate Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children and a Professor of Education at Montclair State College. She was also the coauthor (with Matthew Lipman and Frederick S. Oscanyan) of Philosophy in the Classroom (Temple), Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, Kio and Gus, Elfie and many more in the Philosophy for Children series. She was almost childlike with her enthusiasm – eagerly unpacking concepts and debating with a cheerful laugh – it was a little difficult to connect this person as being the author of many of the books and manuals that led us to sign up in the first place.

She is considered one of the founders of the worldwide Philosophy for Children movement, an approach to philosophy teaching that relies on a self-correcting community of inquiry, rather than the authority of the teacher, to provoke and guide philosophic discussion. This is a major transfer of responsibility to the students, and is considered an innovation with implications for the teaching of philosophy, which is still providing resources and models for philosophy teaching across all ages (including tertiary – yesterday I attended a lecture run by Clinton Golding of the University of Melbourne, on the ‘expedition-educator’ model when engaging in philosophical discussions with students).

While there’s a Wikipedia page about Matthew Lippman, you will not find one for Ann Margaret Sharp, despite her work as a co-author of many of the books and an author in her own right. For example, Geraldo, a story about what a child faces when he leaves one culture and tries to join another and Hannah, a work that was just submitted for publication when I met her in 2004. She discusses that work in this interview:

This particular work [Nakeesha and Jesse], along with Hannah, a program for middle school children, are different in the sense that they also focus on a disturbing social problem: child abuse. They are part of a project of La Traversee in Quebec, Canada (there are seven programs in all) that aims to help children understand the problem of child abuse and become conscious of strategies to prevent their being subjected to such abuse. What is different about the approach is that instead of giving children a list of rules to follow, the issue of child abuse is introduced through an exposure to philosophy of body, together with the ageless philosophical concepts that underlie children’s experience. Further, children are afforded an opportunity to practice self-consciously the various skills of critical, creative and caring thinking, while probing philosophical concepts such as unjust relationships.

It was very difficult to talk about her not being at the conference, having died two days before it began, in her home in Mexico City. There have been a variety of accounts and memories being passed around on the mailing lists for Philosophy for Children educators. It was Laurence Splitter who suggested that the 2010 FAPSA conference be dedicated in the memory of Dr Sharp, a gesture that he summed up as ‘one she’d be quite tickled by’. That pretty much says it all.

If you are looking for more information, I have written previously about my experiences with Philosophy for Children (‘Philosophy in WA‘) and linked to UNESCO on Philosophy for Children, and the Level 1 training courses I’ve helped with (Thinking About Thinking – Philosophy And Teachers’).

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