Philosophy for Children Criterion in Nader Ebrahimi’s “Crows” Story

Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a revolutionary educational program designed in the early 1970s with the endeavors of Matthew Lippman. In this program, children are taught thinking skills from a young age with special stories helping them in complex personal and social life situations. In this study, with a practical purpose and descriptive-analytical method, Nader Ebrahimi's “Crows” has been investigated and analyzed using the standard of P4C (literary, philosophical and psychological sufficiency). The results reveal that it is suitable regarding character and characterization, regardless of minor flaws. It has a consistent and attractive color scheme with the drawback of resolution. Moreover, it is believable for the reader. Its language is fluent, catchy, modern and suitable for age group “C”. There are numerous concepts and topics worthy of discussion in various situations in the story. Among its three themes, two are explicitly suggestive and one is non-suggestive. The story has many challenging situations generalizable to the reader’s real life. It also has many confrontational and debate-oriented conversations similar to P4C conversations. In the story, there are concepts and topics for age groups “B”, “C” and “D”. In all three sufficiencies, there are weaknesses that need to be rewritten.
Keywords: Philosophy for Children (P4C), Nader Ebrahimi’s “Crows”, literary adequacy, philosophical adequacy, psychological adequacy.
Introduction
The basis of education, in traditional education and training systems, is the mere memorization of contents and concepts, without reflecting on them, and as a result parrot-like repetition of the same mental learning. In such systems, people lack the power to criticize and challenge what they have learned, and so creativity and innovation are hindered. As a result, intellectual and innovative people are not trained and the growth and development of knowledge does not happen. Each generation transmits to the next generations what they have learned through indoctrination and repetition. It is clear that the factors, elements and tools of teaching and learning in such systems have a stereotyped and low-efficiency role and approach. The innovative program of Philosophy for Children (P4C), by criticizing and overcoming these repetitive and ineffective factors, elements and tools, and defining and compiling them in a new way, has taken a progressive approach in education and training, the output of which is the education of good people aware of the world around them. Revision and rethinking of this program, in addition to factors and elements such as teacher, learner, training class, teaching method and presentation of materials, also requires training tools. In this context, the theorists of P4C, with a deep understanding of the effectiveness of story in education, have chosen this ancient tool of education to advance the lofty goals of their program. Although these stories were created by compiling and combining narrative elements like other stories, three types of literary, philosophical and psychological sufficiency are embedded simultaneously in their structure and content, which is unique to them.
Fictional texts of P4C are provided in two ways. First, writing stories based on the principles and foundations of the P4C program. Second, a critical and fiction-oriented search in numerous children and adolescent fiction literature with aiming to identify stories likely to be used in this program. Obviously, such stories need to be rewritten after examining and identifying their merits and demerits.
 
Materials & Methods
This research has a practical purpose because it seeks to critically analyze the story of “Crows” (1969), by Nader Ebrahimi (1936-2008), to determine its compatibility with the principles of P4C, and also by recognizing and eliminating its weaknesses to use this story in the P4C program in Iran. The definitions and basics needed to plan and explain the subject and the necessary data to analyzed based on these definitions and basics, were found and extracted from documents and library resources. The method used is descriptive-analytical. The statistical community is Nader Ebrahimi’s Crows (2^nd edition: 1973), the entire text of which is reviewed as an example of the research in the three levels upon which the P4C program intends to write its stories. These three levels are: literary sufficiency, philosophical sufficiency, and psychological sufficiency. Under each level, the story is measured based on more detailed indicators. At the level of literary adequacy, these indicators are four elements of: personality and characterization, color, believability, writing language and vocabulary comprehension of children and teenagers. At the level of philosophical sufficiency, the extent to which the story benefits from the elements of philosophical content and non-indoctrination, philosophical challenge and questioning, and philosophical dialogue and exploration is considered. At the level of psychological adequacy, the appropriateness of concepts and topics of the story with the understanding of children and adolescents is measured.
 
Discussion & Result
Regarding literary sufficiency, the story has a favorable characterization because its main characters are dynamic, leading the audience to highly identify with them. Of course, the element of character and characterization in this story has some slight disadvantages. In the story, the existence of measured cause and effect relationships and its use of elements such as knot-tying, suspense, conflict, crisis and climax have led to the creation of a coherent and logical plot. The notable weakness of the plot from the point of view of the P4C program is its final unraveling. Although this story is a fantasy, considering the logic and criteria that govern such stories, it seems believable. Crows’ language is catchy, fluent, modern and comprehensible for the “C” age group. Weaknesses in the language and lexical understanding of children and teenagers of the story include: Some difficult terms and allusions, syntax problems in the structure of some sentences, the long volume of some dialogues.
In the field of philosophical sufficiency of the story, numerous and diverse philosophical concepts are used in its text, taken from the daily life of the audience and suitable for discussion. Among the three themes of the story, two are accompanied by explicit indoctrination and are inconsistent with P4C, and one is not so. Various philosophical challenges and questions tangible in the real life of children, as well as numerous conversations, many of which being reminiscent of the conversations of P4C, are among the prominent features of the story.
In the field of psychological adequacy, some of the concepts and topics of the story are appropriate to the level of understanding of age group “B”, some are appropriate to the age group “C”, and some are appropriate to the age group “D”. Some of the scenes in the story may be accompanied by negative role models for the audience and lead to unpleasant habits in their behavior. In this story, the situations that represent the opposite gender of Cypress and Plantain have negative consequences for the reader. Situations from the story are also beyond the level of children's understanding. It will be possible to use this story in the P4C program, only by doing the revisions that were mentioned.
 
Conclusion
In this article, Nader Ebrahimi’s Crows, based on the philosophy program for children, was examined and analyzed in three areas: literary adequacy, philosophical adequacy, and psychological adequacy. The result of is that it has high potential capacities in three areas and if its weaknesses are removed, it can be a suitable story for reading and discussion in the circle of philosophical exploration.