Philosophical Instruction of Children in the Islamic Education System

In the two recent decades, when the ‘Philosophy for Children’ has been included among the topics dealt by Iranian thinkers, there have been made different attempts by researchers to investigate into such a topic and to write some works about it. Thus, since there has been shown special interest in the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program, several conferences and instructional workshops have been organized, a number of scholarly books and essays have been published on it, and the P4C curriculum has been established in the PhD level. The author in this essay is going to examine the views of Matthew Lipman, the innovator of such a philosophical instruction, in comparison with the Islamic education system as well as to elucidate the station of teaching critical and creative thinking in the Islamic education. As a result, the author discloses the similarities between the ways of religious education and Lipman’s methods in providing the elements of cognitive skills and critical thinking.