Literary Stories and Their Role in the Improvement of Thinking Ability in Children

Document Type : Scientific- research

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Abstract

Teaching thinking to children (also called philosophy for children) is a program with the aim to cultivate the thinking skills in children and thus, enable them to become competent in dealing with the problems they may encounter in their future lives. This program benefits from stories as one of its main teaching tools since it is believed that stories can assist children in developing a propensity to question, seek for reasons, make rational judgments, and hence, empower their moral values. The present study aims to signify that children’s literary stories constitute a rich source of philosophical elements and thus, can be used as a tool in the process of teaching thinking to children. The literary riches of these stories permit children to use their imagination as well as their cognitive skills while reading. Literary stories allow educationists to penetrate the constraints of using stories with contents that exclusively support the process of teaching philosophical intentions of the writer. Story reading as an educating activity should be included in the curriculum for it possesses the features necessary for constructing fruitful dialog at schools. Stories facilitate adult/ child interaction and thus, contribute to children’s social and cultural understanding.

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