Localization of P4C in Taiwan
Peter Mau-hsiu Yang
Caterpillar Foundation for Philosophy for
Children, Taipei, Taiwan
I. Introduction
Although the December 10, 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Meilidao [Formosa] Journal incident, was a step forward in the long term movement toward democracy in Taiwan, in the short term the street demonstration and subsequent clash with the police impacted my teaching the first experimental class in P4C at a junior high school in Taipei. In fact, the class was halted.
I was teaching the experimental class once a week at Nanmen Junior High School in Taipei. A week after the Kaohsiung Incident, Mr. Zhu, Director of the Curriculum Department, was waiting for me at the school gate when I arrived. I had gone to the school about an hour before the class was to begin, as was my habit. Mr. Zhu told me that previously he had not taken the time to look over the experimental text I was using but the night before he had taken a careful look and decided that it was not suitable. He said: “I want to say a few words at the beginning of class. Saluting the flag is something that all citizens should do. There is no need to discuss it.”
I responded by shaking my head.
“Then you be the one to tell it to the students. “
I shook my head again.
“Then I will sit in on the class and observe,” he said.
“You are welcome to come. It just happens that today I invited several college professors who teach logic to observe the class. We can hold a discussion about it after class.”
That was the ninth class teaching my Chinese translation of Harry Stottlemier’s Discovery and we were to discuss chapter nine: “Saluting the flag.” During the discussion after class, in which Director Zhu participated, I was informed that subsequent classes were cancelled. I use this story as introduction to localizing P4C on Taiwan because the prohibition on discussing politically sensitive topics at the middle school level sent me in the direction of pre-school education and teacher training, storytelling by volunteers in the schools, and playacting of stories. But first I had to translate the IAPC materials.
II. Translating the Textbooks
WhenI first contacted IAPC in 1975, I immediately received a copy of Matt Lipman’s Harry Stottlemier’s Discovery as well as a portion of the teacher’s manual that accompanied it. After reading through the text, I decided that this topic was what I wanted to pursue. Both Matt Lipman and Ann Sharp gave me permission to translate the text into Chinese. Over the next few years, I translated every text that IAPC published as soon as they were published. I also spent over a year teaching at IAPC and during the translating, had opportunities to talk over issues in translation with Matt Lipman himself. At that time many different types of literature were learning the language of philosophy for children. We agreed that translation could alter some content due to the target language’s cultural differences. For example, I changed some of the story titles and some of the content was altered. I changed the story of Lincoln to one of Sun Yat-sen. Looking at this issue from today’s vantage point, I feel actually I changed too much unnecessarily.
I had added chapter titles to the story, which became crucial in the days following the Kaohsiung Incident, as they unnecessarily drew attention to one of the issues in the text. When the text was reprinted, I had the publisher delete all the chapter titles. I believe that if my Chinese translation of Harry Stottlemier’s Discovery had not had the title “Saluting the Flag” in chapter nine, the authorities would not have paid attention to the content and perhaps our experiment with middle school students could have been continued.
Later I reflected on how P4C came to Taiwan and the localization process. From my point of view, localizing the concept of philosophy for children should not mean merely altering the IAPC texts but should mean emphasizing the process of training teachers, especially altering their teaching habits, as well as observing the needs in the society and the needs of the children in order to develop new possibilities of study and learning. This is the direction that Caterpillar Foundation for Philosophy for Children has taken.
III. Changing Direction toward early childhood education
Because of the difficulties developing experimental classes in elementary and middle school due to political sensitivities, we turned toward preschool and early childhood education. I recall that I had once doubted that P4C could develop in the younger years, beginning with kindergarten.
Yet years before the publication of Kio and Gus and XXX, two texts which targeted kindergarten age students, I had taken my translation of Pixie and used it to train kindergarten teachers and parents of preschool and kindergarten students.
Preschool children are not literate so of course I used lecture and reading from the text. So Pixie came to Taiwan kindergartens as an oral story and was well received. But when teachers, students, and parents formed into communities of inquiry to discuss the story, the teachers told me that they wanted more such type of stories to discuss, story that went beyond what IAPC had published.
I have liked picture books for a long time—both reading them and translating them into Chinese. After I finished translating Gareth Matthews Philosophy and the Young Child, I began following his path in understanding picture books in conjunction with philosophy. In Taiwan, picture books are the main source of material for the storytellers, mostly mothers of school age children, whom we trained and sent into the schools to tell stories as a complement to the curriculum.
Enthusiasm for reading and reading groups was just taking off in Taiwan and Caterpillar Foundation built on this phenomenon by organizing the Shu xiang man Bao Dao [Fragrance of Books Permeate the Precious Island] movement with philosophy for children’s method of forming communities of inquiries as the means by which to train the storytellers, most of whom were mothers of elementary school children. These mothers went into the schools and the school libraries as well as hospitals to tell stories and lead discussions. They assisted the schools and the village libraries by providing administrative service.
These storytellers also responded to the invitation of the Red Cross to carry out their storytelling activities with senior citizens. However, once the older people heard the stories, some of them wanted to tell stories themselves, so we benefitted from having the opportunity to listen to their accumulated wisdom.
IV. Editing Bangbang tang [Lollipop Classroom] and Training Story Playacting
In 1993 I accepted a position to teach at National Taitung University, which soon afterwards established the Graduate School of Children’s Literature. My main curricular offerings were in the fields of picture books and philosophy for children, which were brought together in my editing Bangbang tang [Lollipop Classroom], the only journal in the Chinese speaking world that exclusively discussed, critiqued, and introduced picture books. The journal established a stable bridge between picture books and philosophy for children and elementary school education as the journal was sent to every public library in Taiwan, including elementary school libraries.
Soon after the journal was established the graduate school together with Caterpillar Foundation invited Vivian G. Paley to come to Taiwan to give a series of workshops in Taipei and Taitung as well as a public lecture to our graduate students and faculty as well as kindergarten and elementary school teachers
In the 1990s we sponsored philosophical plays for children entitled “Anancy the Spiderman Stories” originating from West Africa. The director of the plays was the director of Shiny Shoes Theatre Troupe and I wrote the plays based on the African stories. Subsequently, we began to make use of stories from local picture books for later plays.
V. Playacting and artist creation
From about 2010 on, we have begun to view picture books as “paper stages,” by which I mean picture books themselves are plays waiting to be staged by the children. This concept neatly dovetailed with Vivian Paley’s way of storytelling and acting out the stories in her preschool classes. Caterpillar Foundation sponsored a series of curriculum workshops in which we demonstrated how to carry out this process. We invited the picture writer—by which I mean an author who also illustrates his own work—Liu Hsu Kung to show how he created his art and we also invited theatre specialist Dr. Huang Meiman to be the “instant director” of the play once Mr. Liu’s story was finished. We used his story I Really Want to Eat A Durian! as the model for this demonstration. We performed the experimental workshop twice at Caterpillar Foundation, once in Taipei and once in the Taitung branch center.
“Instant performance” of philosophical plays is a very active and exciting process. Every participant in the plays are actively discussing choices of performance, bringing in their own experience. This format has the flavor of the last two chapters of Pixie in which the characters performed a play and then discussed it. However, Matt Lipman acknowledged that he drew philosophical inspiration from Plato and we wanted to broaden the philosophical underpinings of the plays to include non-Western philosophy. In these performances we could also see Vivan Paley’s influence because she has said that children need others to see them and recognize the value of their existence. The plays allow the children to participate in a group activity while also contributing their own personal experience.
From this experience I venture to suggest that reading and storytelling activities which use this type of “instantaneous play performance” is the best method to promote philosophy for children because it forms a community of inquiry of the performers, who comment on their performance and discuss the ideas floating between the participants. The coach or authority in the community of inquiry no longer has such a prominent place as he or she is replaced by the actors themselves, that is, by the children performing the plays and discussing the performance. Of course the coach can be a performer as well, but only one of many.