'Mark u Rita' : translation, adaptation and analysis of Mathew Lipman's programme 'Kio & Gus' and 'Wondering at the World'

Abstract

Philosophy for Children is primarily aimed to equip children with social capabilities such as thinking logically, ta.king care of themselves and extracting sound conclusions from the situation at hand. The main tool used in Philosophy for Children is dialogue. It is a programme that aims at generating questions which are more important than the answers themselves. If we want our children to become reflective adults, we must encourage them to be reflective children by encouraging them to talk things through. Throughout this dissertation I explored the possibility of fulfilling these aims in our schools. The first part of the dissertation discusses the teaching of thinking skills, focusing on Philosophy for Children. TI1e second part of the dissertation focuses on the translation and adaptation of Lipman's manual to Maltese, and discusses actual implementation of the project in a Maltese primary school.