If philosophy is questioning and searching for the truth and is trying to ask the main questions of life, it can be said that some children's questions are philosophical. Children to explore the realities of the world around them, ask questions that are philosophical in nature: “Where did grandfather go after his death? My mother asked me to tell the truth, what is the truth? My father said that my reason is not satisfying, how can I provide a satisfying reason?” These are some examples of children’s philosophical questions and their need for philosophy. Reflection on these apparently childish questions reveals basic concepts of philosophy including ontology, epistemology and axiology clearly. Gareth B. Matthews, prominent expert of children's literature and philosophy, reckons that “children are natural philosophers”. They ask philosophical questions and want to discover the truth personally” (Matthews, 1995:17, 18). Karin Murris) 2012) in response to the question "can children do philosophy?" says: “my temporary answer to this question is poignantly formulated by Sharp and Splitter. They write: “…abstract concepts to do with conservation, causality, the mind, reality, personhood and truth may be within the grasp of young children provided that they can find pathways to and from their own more concrete experiences. It is up to adults to lay the groundwork for the construction of these pathways” (Splitter and Sharp, 1995: 22).

In the past few decades, many activities have been done in the field of teaching intellectual skills. One of the most recent activities is the program of “Philosophy for children” designed by Matthew Lipman in the seventh decade of the twentieth century to develop philosophical thinking.

The pioneers of this program, with two different approaches assume that the best way to develop children’s philosophical thinking is enjoying the stories.

The first group is related to those like Lipman, Sharp and Cam.  They think that popular children's literature is not written to develop children's philosophical thinking (Naji, 2004B:15). For example, Lipman assumed that available children's stories are useful for literary and symbolic goals not for philosophical inquiry (Fisher, 2006:160). He presumed stories are suitable for strengthening philosophical thinking that encompass diverse philosophical views and various aspects of the philosophical thinking such as judgment, reasoning, respect, appreciation and compassion (Lipman, 1980:72).

 In contrast to this view, Fisher and Matthews reckoned that common stories in children's literature contain philosophical concepts and can be effective in increasing children's philosophical thinking (Fisher, 2006:63; Matthews, 1995:79). Khosrownejad (2010: 169) also assume that popular children's stories due to their decentralizing properties are inherently philosophical and can reinforce philosophical thinking in children even if they did not aim to create philosophical challenges.

In this regard, a third approach with more compatibility with the second one could also be extracted. This approach states that some ancient literary texts have philosophical and literary richness and rewriting them in simple and attractive language, with guide book codification for each story, can develop children and teenagers philosophical thinking in a community of inquiry. It is noteworthy that feasibility of such an approach to use these stories in the community of inquiry necessitates trained teachers who could arise philosophical and challenging questions and be familiar with thinking skills.

Having all said, the present study aims to investigate the third approach and find an adequate answer to the question that "do the ancient stories, created to serve different purposes, have the capability to reinforce philosophical thought in children?" This study seeks to find this answer through analyzing the character element in three of the humorous tales in Masnavi. This analysis is conducted based on Lipman's theory on philosophical thinking components.   Lipman’s views are important because in his views caring is one of the dimensions of philosophical thinking and is of a moral aspect.

What follows is a review over previous literature and an introduction to Lipman's views toward philosophical thinking.

Panahi (2011) examined Attar’s Manteqo tair, and demonstrated that the bilateral dialogue method of Attar in this work is very similar to Lipman's method. Akbari (2012) in his doctoral dissertation examined philosophical contents in stories of Persian classical literature. In this study fundamental questions of philosophy in three realms of ontology, epistemology and axiology have been specified and for each of the questions provided a story from classical Persian literary texts. Hamidi (2013) in his master’s thesis, used philosophical, literary and educational indicators, and selected stories of Shahnameh to be used in the p4c program. Habibi Araqi et al. (2013), according to the criteria compiled by leaders of the program, examined four selected works of classical literature namely Klile and Damne, Masnavi, Golestan and Bostan. In their paper, did Hesampour and Mosleh (2014) investigate text and image in some popular and available stories for children based on Mathews theory and found that stories not only possess literary elements like imagination and eloquence but also had philosophical indices like ethics, identification and classification. 

Lipman initially thought that teaching critical thinking enables us to actualize all children’s faculties, but later found that critical thinking is not enough for development of thinking because it does not include conceptualization and other skills in the official philosophy and formal logic. Thus, after a while, he came to the conclusion that to improve thinking, different aspects of thinking including  critical, creative and caring thinking must be taught (Naji, 2004A:102). Thinking in Education (2003) is the latest Lipman’s formation of the new paradigm. In this book, he explained different aspects of philosophical thinking and for each he mentioned components that are examined in this section. 

Critical thinking

According to Lipman, “critical thinking is the thinking that facilitates judgment because it relies on criteria, is self-correcting, and is sensitive to context” (Lipman, 2000:212). He supposed that good judgment requires an open and flexible mind that in the face of new ideas and events shows different behaviors and responses (Lipman, 1980:37). Moreover, in a judgment, comparing things and identifying their relationship is too important (Jahani, 2003:90). A good judgment requires clear understanding, convincing argument and avoiding fallacy (Lipman, 2003:235).

Another major feature of critical thinking is its reliance to criteria. According to Lipman, criterion is “a rule or principle utilized in the making of judgments” (Lipman, 2003:212). In fact, “criteria are reasons and when we have to sort things out descriptively or evolutionally, we have to use the most reliable reasons we can find” (Lipman, 2003:213).

Self-correction is another trait of critical thinking. One benefit of converting the classroom into the community of inquiry is that in such circles, students not only think on various philosophical, moral and social subjects, but also investigate thinking about  thinking to rectify one’s own and other’s procedures and methods (Jahani, 2003:42). This is what is called “meta-cognition” and consists of questioning one’s own thinking process, discovering its weaknesses and rectifying them (Lipman, 2003:242). Moreover, identifying inconsistencies in discussions, pointing out fallacious assumptions or invalid inferences in reasoning of others and clarifying vague expressions in texts are examples of thinking about thinking (Lipman, 2003:224).

Sensitivity to context is the last feature of critical thinking. Thinking that is sensitive to context involves recognition of:

A. Exceptional or irregular circumstances (For example, we normally examine statements for truth or falsity independent of the character of the speaker. However, in a court trial, the character of a witness may become a relevant consideration).

B. Special limitations.

C. Overall configurations) individual situations need to be examined on their own terms and not forced into some procrustean bed of general rules and regulation. Therefore, details and exceptions of each sample should invoke sensitivity and general rules ought not to be imposed on details.

D. The possibility that some meanings do not translate from one context or domain to another (Lipman, 2003:219).

Creative thinking

Lipman assumed that creative thinking is "thinking how to say    what   merit’s   saying,  how  to  make  what  merit’s making, how to do what merit’s doing" (Lipman, 2003:248). The most important features of creative thinking include: Originality, imagination, independence, experimentation, holism, expression, self-transcendence, surprise, productivity, generativity, maieuticity and inventiveness (Lipman, 2003:246, 249(.

Caring thinking

Lipman presumed that “caring thinking involves a double meaning, for on the one hand it means to think solicitously about that which is the subject matter of our thought, and on the other hand it is to be concerned about one’s manner of thinking” (Lipman, 2003:262). Without caring, thinking is devoid of a values component. Lipman) 2003:264-269) has divided caring thinking into following types:

Appreciative thinking

To appreciate is to pay attention to what matters, to what is of importance.

Affective thinking

Lipman thinks that “at least some emotions are not merely the physiological consequences of human judgments: They are those judgments themselves".

Active thinking

In addition to emotions, Lipman thinks that some actions are cognitive since they sometimes require judgment and must be conducted for the sake of maintaining the valuable affairs.

Normative thinking

Education should lead thought to norms and values. Child must learn to be interested in something that is interest-worthy.

Empathic thinking

For Lipman, the term “empathy” means “put ourselves into another’s situation and experience that person’s emotions”. This enables us to understand much better how that person views his or her situation. The features mentioned, were foundations of set-out a self-made table in order to accommodate the stories. Accordingly, components described in Thinking in Education (2003) summarized and several other components from Philosophy in the Classroom (1980) were added to Table 1. On the left column of the table, dimensions of philosophical thinking are represented including critical thinking, creative thinking and caring thinking. Critical thinking is of three parts of meta-cognition (covering self-correction and correcting thinking process of others), good judgment and sensitivity to context with each of them having various components. Creative thinking and caring thinking both have several components listed in front of their cells in the table as well.

This research has chosen "Qualitative Content Analysis" method to achieve its goal through a variety of methods. Qualitative content analysis is divided into two forms of Inductive Qualitative Content Analysis and Deductive Qualitative Content Analysis based on Mayring’s classification (Mayring, 2000:5). In the present study, the deductive form has been applied. Deductive pattern uses previous theories and studies. In other words, concepts, categories and analysis structures are defined and compiled before entering the text and analyzing it. The induction is of deduction type and moves from whole to parts. Its aim is to test and examine the categories and patterns and their applications in various situations or enrich the theories (Elo and Kyngass, 2008:109- 112).

In the present study, deductive analysis is used as the contents of the stories were adapted with the table developed based on Lipman's works in the early stages of the research, and hidden thinking components behind them were identified and inferred.

In order to ensure reliability of the table made by the researcher, expert views from two scholars in the field of philosophy for children were considered along with views form the members of the research committee of this study were taken.

The table was first given to them along with the resources and references used to extract them and after several meetings with them, differences were tackled and agreement was reached over components of the table. The stories were later analyzed according to the final edition of the table. Analyzed stories were given to the research team and one prominent children literature expert. Some modifications were also made on the analyses based on their suggestions. Thus, reliability of the components of the table and the method of analyzing the stories were all evaluated in this way. Lincoln and Guba (1985) cited in Maykut and Morehouse (1995:25) stated that working with a research team increases reliability of the study. The present study is taken from a doctoral dissertation under supervision of supervising and reading professors, along with expert views from several scholars in both fields of philosophy for children and children literature to give it a high degree of validity.

Sample of this study included three humorous tales from Masnavi selected purposefully, that is, the stories selected for this study had at least one of the components of philosophical thinking.

In this research, analysis units are sentences, paragraphs and the whole text, and researchers tried to consider every sentence in addition to the whole work and measured the presence of philosophical thinking components in fictions. Considering the whole work in analysis helped researchers find components with no clear phrase or sentence in stories to explain them and the whole story connoted them implicitly.

The Mouse and the Camel (Mirhashemi, 2013: 371)

  Once upon a time, a mouse caught a rope tied to a camel to pull his legs. When this big animal began to walk, the mouse imagined that he was pulling him. “How strong and powerful I am”, he thought and felt proud. The mouse did not understand that the camel was walking by himself. The two animals then arrived at a river. Here, the mouse came to a stop because he was afraid of the deep water ahead of him.

“Why have you stopped, dear friend?” asked the camel”.

“Keep leading me on, for you are my guide.”

“But this is a profound ocean. If I go further, I’ll drown,” replied the mouse.

“Let me measure how deep it is,” said the camel, walking into the river.

“Why? It only comes up to my knee,” the camel answered. “Do go on, sir.”

And it was obvious that the mouse could not pass the river by himself.

“Oh great camel,” mouse said, “Your knee is different with mine.”

He took pity on mouse. “Jump up and sit on my hump,” camel said,

“And strongly prevent him from being so proud in future.”

 This story, with subtle and pleasant humor, teaches the addressee to consider his limits and avoid doing something beyond his ability. Therefore, if others give the opportunity to do something to him, he should consider this a kind of opportunity to experience and know that more difficult tests are on the way. So, narcissism and pride must be avoided. As the mentioned story, in a childly atmosphere teaches moral and valuable points such as Identifying weaknesses and avoiding arrogance and narcissism to child, it has “normative” components and provides a fertile ground for caring thinking training.

Another component in the story is the “active thinking” component. As noted earlier, Lipman knows some actions as cognitive and within caring thinking category since they require judgment and are taken in order to preserve the valuable affairs. In the story above, after the mouse finds its inability, the false pride created in him is lost. Since teaching these things is done by camel character, as a coach, empirically, the story enjoys component of “active thinking” and introduces children to the concept of caring thinking. In addition, fear of mouse when exposed to river is one of the instances of “affective thinking” component. As already mentioned, Lipman considers some emotions as a form of judgment or, more broadly, a kind of thinking that like any other type of judgment or thinking can go wrong. By saying "water is very deep and if I go further, I’ll drown” does the mouse show his fear and this fear is resulting from a judgment about his inability to enter the water and endangering his life. Therefore, the story involves “affective thinking” component and hence introduces children to the concept of caring thinking.

“Comparing things and identifying their relationships” and the “logical reasoning” are from the other components in the characterization of story.  The  creator of story, on behalf of the mouse, says that "your knee is different with mine, if the water is up to your knee, much higher than my height" and points at one of the required and primary skills of philosophical thought, that is, comparing two or several things and finding out their differences and similarities.

According to Lipman, in a good judgment “comparing things and identifying their relationships” are of great importance. If there were not anything connected with other things, relationships would not be meaningful and judgment would not exist (Jahani, 2003:90). In addition, saying the aforementioned phrase the mouse is trying to provide a convincing reasoning for the camel through which he could save his soul from the dangerous situation. Thus, benefiting from components of “comparing things and identifying their relationships” and “logical reasoning” the story has the necessary capability of developing critical thinking in children.

The story of the jackal that fell into the pit of dye (Ghasem Zadeh, 2011: 218)

Once upon a day, a jackal fell into a dye-vat, and his skin was dyed of various colors. Proud of his marvelous appearance, he returned to his friends, and desired them to address him as a peacock. Have you ever seen such a beautiful jackal? "I am a peacock as beautiful as Jupiter", he answered. Nevertheless, they decided to test his pretensions, saying, “can you appear like a peacock?”, "can you scream like a peacock, or do you have beauty feathers like peacock?".

Therefore, he was forced to give up and admit that he did not, whereupon they rejected him and said that the peacock’s beauty is heavenly and colors do not change the nature. Thus his friends  did not believe his  talks.

The creator of this story has expressed one of the important philosophical issues on behalf of the story characters, that is, essential and accidental features. The jackal with his skin accidentally dyed with various colors, in his dreams, reckons that changing his appearance can change his nature and so become a beautiful peacock.     

However, friends of the Jackal are sensitive to details and are not deceived by his appearance. This characteristic comes for their sensitivity to context. So, his friends, with raising questions such as “can you appear like a peacock?”, "can you scream like a peacock?” and so on, are trying to free him from this error and amend his wrong thinking. Accordingly, in this story, the component of “rectification of other’s thought process” is highly projected. In addition, because the rectification of jackal’s thinking process is together with expressing reasons and criteria from behalf of other jackals, the story has components of “good judgment” and question from this components in the community of inquiry, provides a context for children's development of critical thinking. “Comparing things  and  identifying  their  relationships” is other components that can be derived from the dialogue among jackals. This dialogue about comparing the properties of jackals and peacocks that familiarizes the child with the concept of similarities and differences and how to use them in proper judgment. Thus, the presence of this component in the story provides a context for children's development of critical thinking.

In the aspect of caring thinking, designing story is in a way that teaches a child to avoid superficial judgments. In fact, the main purpose of the story is the formation of this intellectual belief that decorating appearance is sometimes a way to hide defects and wise man should not be seduced by appearance. Avoiding superficial judgments is fully obvious by other jackals by the phrase: “colors do not change your nature and we do not believe your talks”.  Accordingly, in terms of inspiring quiddity of this great idea, the story encompasses “normative” component and plays a crucial role in strengthening children’s caring thinking.

Mud-eating man and apothecary’s balance stones (Ghasem Zadeh, 2011:348)

This story is about a man accustomed to eat mud. Someday, he went to apothecary’s shop to buy some sugar. However, the seller was a cunning man and his balance stones were made of mud. He put the stone in a pan of balance and took the other pan to fill it with sugar from the warehouse of his shop. When the customer saw the mudstone, began to eat it out of sight of the seller. In contrast, the apothecary was seeing him from the warehouse and prolonged his absence to give this chance to the man to eat more and more. “Eat more and more” the seller said, “do you think you are stealing from my property? You are in fact stealing from your own property! As much as you eat from stone scales, you have reduced the weight of sugar. Then eat more”.

Despite simplicity and briefness, the story of mud-eating man and apothecary’s scale stone contains this profound and thoughtful point that cheater man just deceives himself and one who thinks is harming others, has harmed himself at the same time. In a broader look, this story is the example of the famous saying "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reaped" which teaches us every good thought and  act of good and evil that we do will return to us sooner or later. Because of this valuable and moral education, the story contains a “normative” component and this component is one of the things that demonstrates the philosophical potential of the story in developing child’s caring thinking.

In addition, “comparing the things and understanding their relationships” as well as “logical reasoning” are from components of good judgment that can be derived from the term "as much as you eat from stone scales, you have reduced the weight of sugar". Therefore, the story in this respect also provides a good context to foster critical thinking.

 “Holism” and “expression” are from other themes of the mentioned story. Holism feature refers to the apothecary’s overall insight who knows if his scale stone is diminished, instead, he will make more profit from selling sugar. The author of story expresses this general insight with an expressive language in the final few lines on behalf of apothecary. Accordingly,  the  story  provides  the ground for developing a child’s creative thinking and familiarizes him with mentioned components in this regard

This study aimed to investigate and identify Lipman’s philosophical thought components in humorous stories of ancient texts. For this purpose, three stories of humorous anecdotes of Masnavi were selected and analyzed with the inductive method.  Despite the fact that the stories of Masnavi not written specifically for the purpose of developing philosophical thinking, the researchers' s main belief was based on the assumption that these stories contain elements and capabilities that reading them subtly and gradually leads to forming and strengthening philosophical thinking skills in children and adolescents. In the early stages of research, based on Lipman's works, a table was developed by the researchers in which the philosophical thinking components were included. “Inductive Content Analysis” method was then used to analyze the content of anecdotes, the stories were adapted with the content of aforementioned tables and the hidden thinking components in characters of the stories were inferred. The results of analyzing stories can be seen in Table 2.                              

In terms of frequency, as it can be seen in Table 2, critical thinking components have given more richness to stories. Consequently, the analyzed stories have more philosophical potential in fostering critical thinking. Among the components of critical thinking, “good judgment” component was observed in all stories and “meta-cognition” and “sensitivity to the context” were components that observed only in one story.

In the next step, caring thinking components were more abundant in the stories. “Normative” component was the only one that was observed in all three stories and two components of “appreciative” and “empathic” were not seen in any of the stories.

Regarding creative thinking, two stories involved components of “holism”, “expressive” and “imagination” and in one of the stories no component was observed. Thus, the creative thinking components were less present in stories than other ones.

It should be noted that this conclusion is obtained with respect to this research sample and to achieve more accurate results, we need to analyze more stories of this work. However, it also should be noted that the higher frequency of components in a work could not be considered a sufficient reason for any  preference.  Other factors such as the diversity of components and richness of literature also contribute to better quality of a work and this also needs another opportunity for research.

It is suggested that teachers in their lessons use stories that have more philosophical potential due to more components. Teachers should have sufficient teaching methods available in each of these three philosophical thinking components.

Since the components identified in this study, are the same components emphasized by Lipman as the pioneer of philosophy for children, it is suggested that children's literature authors interested in creating stories with intellectual and philosophical themes, be inspired by the components of this research to write their stories.

Children's literature authors are also recommended to rewrite the stories of this research  as purposive sample of Masnavi for two age-groups of children and adolescents. Rewriting stories should not neglect any component of the source texts.

Notes

Essential feature is referred to as the property that “consolidates the nature of subject and the nature of the subject is not realized without it. For example, rationality is an essential feature for human beings (Mozaffar, 1995: 152). Accidental features are those out of the nature of the subject and attached to it after completion of the "inner" categories of a human being such as “smiling” (Muzaffar, 1995: 152).

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.