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Some philosophers claim that young children cannot do philosophy. This paper examines some of those claims, and puts forward arguments against them. Our beliefs that children cannot do philosophy are based on philosophical assumptions about children, their thinking and about philosophy. Many of those assumptions remain unquestioned by critics of Philosophy with Children. My conclusion is that the idea that very young children can do philosophy has not only significant consequences for how we should educate young children, but also for how adults should do philosophy; and that further research is urgently needed.

Philosophy with children (P4C)1 presents significant positive challenges for educators. Its ‘community of enquiry’ pedagogy assumes not only an epistemological shift in the role of the educator, but also a different ontology of ‘child’ and balance of power between educator and learner. After a brief historical sketch and an outline of the diversity among P4C practitioners, epistemological uncertainty in teaching P4C is crystallised in a succinct overview of theoretical and practical tensions that are a direct result of the implementation of P4C in mainstream education. These recurring pedagogical tensions in my practice as P4C teacher, teacher educator and mentor of teacher educators cause disequilibrium that opens up rich opportunities for philosophy of education in supporting novice P4Cers. Disequilibrium is a positive force that opens up a space in which educators need to reflect upon their values, their beliefs about learning and teaching, and ultimately encourages educators to rethink their own role. Plato's metaphor of the stingray highlights the role of the P4C teacher educator as model of the P4C teacher in any setting: ‘to numb and to be numbed’. The P4C community and its institutions need to address the questions arising from these pedagogical tensions; and this needs to be done with integrity, that is, in communities of enquiry that include children. If not, in the long term, a more instrumental version of P4C may prevail.

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Inspired by the philosophies of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, the aim of this paper is to stir up trouble and to trouble school time. What we intend to disturb puts our own self as human at stake through a philosophical investigation in how a particular relationship to and experience of time is nowadays prominently fostered and cultivated in educational institutions. We propose that 'time' and 'childhood' are intrinsically entangled concepts and logically connected, in the lived experience of educational contemporary institutions, with colonialism and capitalism. Decolonisation requires a troubling of the experience of time as it involves the subordination and denigration of children and childhood ('mysopedy'). We do this through a genealogy (a political reading of 'the' present) of the concepts time, childhood and school.