I have tried using philosophy in the art classroom. I had some mixed results. It helped some kids and I suspected it might have been too over their heads to a few who had no background knowledge. What was interesting was that it worked very well for the older years, especially when they had taken up the post-modernism frame. The nihilists and existentialists were specially very popular to my chagrin. What mattered most was that the art was particularly good. Philosophy was a good means to an end. I had to be particularly careful when matters of belief and religion cropped up. It is not a safe subject by any means. If you are going to do the same, exercise a lot of caution when in a private religious school and a lot of questioning and preparation would help a lot, otherwise you might just confuse the younger ones but I never thought my interest and wide reading in philosophy would ever came in handy.
The salient pattern was that helping kids think also stimulated their imagiNation. I can tell how excited they were to visit this under explored country-the last frontier.
I definitely recommend that even younger children, possibly from age 7 should be encouaraged to learn the history of ideas, if they display any enthusiasm. The younger the better since kids are very perceptive, only adults seem to think they are not.
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