The Philosophy of Childhood / Gareth B. Matthews

Gareth B. Matthews explores children's capacity for philosophical thought and asks how adults' assumptions about childhood can obscure it. Drawing on conversations with children, he examines the ways they question ideas, assess arguments and pursue problems for themselves. He also challenges influential accounts of cognitive and moral development, including those of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, and considers what is lost when children's philosophical curiosity is dismissed as immature thinking.