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Big questions, little ones: 17-year-old takes philosophy to Mumbai schools
Pehla Prashn is a student-led initiative taking philosophical inquiry into BMC, public and aided-school classrooms across Mumbai.
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Mumbai: How do you know if you're dreaming or you're awake? How do you know the colour you see is really there? These deceptively simple questions are the starting point for Pehla Prashn, a student-led initiative taking philosophical inquiry into BMC, public and aided-school classrooms across Mumbai.
Founded by 17-year-old Neel Tripathi, a student of philosophy, history and literature, Pehla Prashn, “Big ideas for little ones” has become massive in scope. Neel has personally conducted sessions on dreams and colour to 400+ students, mentored 40+ schoolteachers to continue the program in the classroom, and managed dozens of student volunteers.
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Neel has collaborated with the NGO ‘Yuva Unstoppable’ to reach students across a massive number of BMC public and aided schools. Yuva Unstoppable is India’s premiere youth movement, impacting over 10 million lives. Amitabh Shah, the founder of the organisation, said that Pehla Prashn “can become a movement,” and that it has had “invaluable contributions” to philosophy education in India.
Neel designed a two-session curriculum around dreams and colour. Rather than teaching the names of philosophers or abstract terminology, he asks children to examine what they know, explain why they believe it, listen to other viewpoints and respond through discussion, writing and art.
The answers have been incredible in quality. One child argued that “You can’t dream within a dream,” which is why dreams and reality cannot be identical, since you can definitely dream in real life. Another said colour must be real “because it lets us differentiate between things,” an extraordinarily advanced pragmatic argument claiming that reality is determined by utility. In another exercise, a child compared flying cars, aeroplanes and UFOs to argue that modern technology is making dreams and reality increasingly difficult to distinguish between; indeed, both seem to be absurd.
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The children’s drawings are as revealing as their words. Some have tried to show how the same object can appear differently to different people, while others have imagined dream worlds that closely resemble everyday life. For Tripathi, these responses are evidence that young children can grapple with complex ideas when they are given the freedom to do so.
Tripathi’s leadership in mentoring 40+ schoolteachers to continue the program also shows how Pehla Prashn will continue to make an impact for a long, long time.
The programme is deliberately non-competitive. There are no marks, rankings or “correct” answers. Its aim is simply to create space for curiosity, disagreement and independent thought. With the initiative already expanding to more schools, Pehla Prashn is betting on a simple idea: children do not need to be taught what to think before they can be invited to think for themselves.
