Overview of P4C Activities in Switzerland

In 1999, a center of philosophy for children (Pro-philo) has been created in the french part
of Switzerland. Ten years after, the P4C situation in this part of the helvetic confederation is
very promising. For example, until a few years ago, philosophical activities were held only with
children of different private schools and mostly alternative. But recently, I’ve been contacted to
offer seminars for teachers of the public instruction department and these workshops are financed
and organized by this state department. The two seminars (2 and 4 days) will be renewed this year
and we hope that they will be as successful as last year.

Also, different training centers are making a research on P4C in order to evaluate the possibility
to introduce philosophy in the basic formation of the new teachers. One of these studies makes a
fine analysis of dialogue in order to see how it contributes to training thinking.

In general, we observe that the interest for the practice of philosophy for children is growing.
Therefore, the center Pro-philo will be professionalized and transformed into a non governmental
organization. In other words, Pro-philo will now receive a structure which will enable it to engage
in fundraising in order to finance all the projects here (teacher training, coaching, translation, …)
and maybe even some outside Switzerland. One of them is a cyber-addiction prevention project
through philosophical dialogue. The instructional manual called Thinking the Digital World
will soon be released. We also work in partnership with the Youth Health Service (related to the
department of the public instruction) in order to transform this project into a larger one related to
health education through the development of critical thinking.

The recent developments are very encouraging and they are offering great perspectives for the
practice of philosophy with children. We also hope that in a few years we will be able to participate
to the elaboration of international projects and be involved in their achievement.

Report by - Alexander Herriger

Teacher trainer in philosophy for children
Switzerland