“I love the Camp dynamic. We all, and I mean campers AND counsellors, cycle through the motions. Not just because we’re busy, but we think and feel along with each other. Every time I’m amazed to see the campers being engaged with all the exciting philosophical inquiries and activities. When that last day of camp moves towards the end I cannot help but have a profound sense of being part of an amazing event.”
As Education Director of TTP in Canada, Arthur teaches students and volunteers of the TTP how to design their curriculum and how to combine theory with practice. Through the many online meetings, they look into how philosophical ideas relate to, for example, painting, movies, and photography, and then how to relate them to fun activities that further the philosophical inquiries.
He is also collaborating with two schools and a museum in Ivory Coast to implement a variety of philosophical activities. For more, please visit the Thinking Playground website and look under the GLOBAL tab.
Arthur has also won a grant from the Japanese International Christian University Foundation. The grant allowed (and continues to allow) Arthur to set up a philosophical program at the Contemporary Art Museum (MUCAT) and the Anador High School in Abobo, Ivory Coast. The Philosophy for Children (P4C) program concerns Critical, Creative and Cooperative Thinking Skills and Communal Dialogue. In addition, it allowed Arthur to create and teach an online introduction course on P4C, Art and Cultural Differences to Japanese students who then also visited Ivory Coast to participate in the newly set up programs.
In addition, Arthur was awarded his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and wrote a dissertation called ‘Intensive Resonances: A Deleuzian Pedagogy of Difference in Philosophizing with Children.’ Its main topics are Philosophy for Children (P4C) and the work of 20th-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, which focuses on the concepts of Learning Affect and Thinking Immanence. By developing an affective conception of thinking, he shows that the manner in which thinking and learning operate has important pedagogical implications for philosophical inquiry with children and the theoretical and practical cornerstone of P4C: The Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). Based on these implications, he suggests several pedagogical innovations. Most recently, he has two articles that have been accepted for publication. First, an essay entitled ‘Existential Urgency: Towards a Provocation to Thinking Different’ combines a reading of Heidegger’s provocation to think and Merleau-Ponty’s concept of embodiment to reconceptualize thinking as embodied practice. Second, an essay entitled ‘Affect and Philosophical Inquiry with Children’ for which he was awarded the 2022 essay prize by the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) and which was published in January 2024 in the journal Childhood & Philosophy. In 2018, he also co-wrote an article (see the media page) and a children’s book with the director of the camp, Susan T. Gardner. Arthur has also published with UNESCO on, for example, the Asia-Arab Philosophical Dialogues and academic articles with Routledge and various journals.