A Plea for Wild Philosophy: How Thinking about Online Philosophy Teaching Shows that Doing Philosophy Well Is Like Being an Elephant in the Jungle

Teaching philosophy online in secondary schools differs from offline teaching. The explanations usually offered for this difference show the
cognitivist assumptions of mainstream pre-university philosophy education,
meaning that philosophy education assumes that the aim of its practice is the
enhancement of internal mental abilities. This paper argues that this view of
the goal of education is unwarranted and unnecessarily restrictive, and that
it implies an undesirable dichotomy between learning to be competent and
being competent. An alternative, based on ecological and enactive views
of cognition, is presented as a better conception of philosophical cognitive
competence in general, and of the difference between offline and online
teaching in particular. This alternative suggests that the difference resembles
the difference between life in a zoo and life in the jungle, and that we should
teach pupils to do wild philosophy.