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Matthew Lipman, Philosopher and Educator, Dies at 87

It was during the contentious years of the Vietnam War that Matthew Lipman, a philosopher and educator, found that many Americans were having trouble presenting their views about the conflict cogently, and it distressed him.

Professor Lipman, who was teaching at Columbia University at the time, concluded that many adults could simply not reason well for themselves, and he feared that it was too late for them to learn. So he responded with a radical idea: to teach children philosophy — or specifically “the cultivation of excellent thinking” — beginning in pre-kindergarten and continuing through high school.

The idea clashed with the thinking of education theorists like Jean Piaget, who believed children were not capable of critical thinking before age 11 or 12. And educators were reluctant to cram another discipline into already full curriculums.

But beginning with a trial run in the Montclair public school system in New Jersey, Professor Lipman’s philosophy for children caught on, promoted by an organization he founded in 1974, the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, at Montclair State University. The course spread in its original or derivative forms to more than 4,000 schools in the United States and still more in 60 foreign countries, its materials translated into 40 languages.

The institute’s program also inspired the formation of an international conference in 1983 and has been endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Professor Lipman died on Dec. 26 in West Orange, N.J., the institute said. He was 87.

His initial focus was on teaching logic, but the curriculum soon embraced concepts like truth, justice and freedom. It turned out that the questions that gripped children were pretty similar to those that have long beguiled philosophers:

“I wonder if ghosts are real or unreal.”

“When Dad tells me to be good, what does he mean?”

“Why is time so slow sometimes?”

“Where did Grandpa go when he died?”

Gareth B. Matthews, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said in an interview on Wednesday that Professor Lipman was “the most influential figure” in helping youngsters develop philosophical thinking. He particularly praised Professor Lipman’s pedagogical approach.

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Matthew Lipman, creator of the philosophy for children movement, during a classroom discussion in an undated photo.Credit...Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC)

That method involves children sitting in a circle and taking turns reading aloud from a work of fiction that is intended to stimulate philosophical discussion. The teacher directs the conversation at first, then lets students raise their own questions and answer them. Professor Lipman called the exercise a “community of inquiry.”

In the process, children cover much the same ground that philosophers have; in Professor Matthews’ phrase, they “recapitulate the history of philosophy.”

“They come up with ideas classical philosophers have come up with, and maybe even develop them in interesting ways,” he said.

Professor Lipman found that children could not only handle the challenge but also thrive on it. A 1983 study by the Educational Testing Service found that the more than 3,000 middle-school students in New Jersey who took the course demonstrated almost twice as much academic progress in a year as the students who did not take the course.

“The gains evidenced in the present study should enable students not only to deal more effectively with school tasks, but with the many problems that face the preadolescent in our complex society,” wrote Virginia C. Shipman, an official of the testing service.

Matthew Lipman was born on Aug. 24, 1923, in Vineland, N.J. He fought in Europe in the infantry during World War II and was awarded two Bronze Stars. He studied at several universities, earning his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia, where he taught for 19 years.

In 1972 he left Columbia to become a philosophy professor at Montclair State College, and two years later, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he started his institute there. With Ann Margaret Sharp, the institute’s associate director, he produced novels, stories and manuals for use in the curriculum. Similar programs have been developed at a host of universities.

Professor Lipman also started the publication Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children.

Professor Lipman’s marriage to Wynona Moore, the first African-American woman to be elected to the New Jersey State Senate, ended in divorce. His second wife, Theresa Smith, died in 2006. He is survived by his daughter, Karen Lipman.

He began writing his first philosophical novel for children, “Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery,” in 1969. (The title character’s name is a play on Aristotle.) Directed at 10-year-olds, the book uses classroom dramas to teach the laws of logic. For example, logic does not permit the inversion of a sentence like “All cucumbers are vegetables,” because “All vegetables are cucumbers” is absurd.

Harry, like his author, came to believe that the most important thing in the world is thinking.

“I know that lots of other things are also very important and wonderful, like electricity and magnetism and gravitation,” Harry said. “But although we understand them, they can’t understand us. So thinking must be something very special.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: Matthew Lipman, 87, Dies; Made Children Philosophers. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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