Teaching philosophy to high school students
August 24, 2008 5:29 PM Subscribe

A Sydney Morning Herald article about the teaching of philosophy in Australian high schools.Today, this article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. Finally I might be able to get a job with my philosophy major!

Not surprisingly the Australian Philosophy Teachers Network website is down, most probably due to the media attention. Hopefully it will be back up soon. As someone with both a philosophy major, and on the verge of an education degree, this could be the happy marriage between the two. It could also mean I don't just have to teach English at high school.

posted by robotot (33 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite

Fuck and alas.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:38 PM on August 24, 2008

But thanks for the link anyway!
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:39 PM on August 24, 2008

Here, this'll save them a bit of time.

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya'
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED...

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya'
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
SOCRATES, HIMSELF, WAS PERMANENTLY PISSED...

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!
posted by jimmythefish at 5:46 PM on August 24, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

"One day after class I noticed a student pick up a pile of five chairs and place them on a pile of two. I wondered how many times this student chose the bigger, heavier, more troublesome pile of chairs," he said.

I'm confused. What's the deductive logic in that? That was supposed to be an anecdote about using deductive logic, wasn't it?
posted by Ms. Saint at 5:47 PM on August 24, 2008

The student deduced that if lifting weights made him bigger and stronger, then lifting the five-chair pile would bring him the maximum possible results in the situation.
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:13 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

No, just about using analytical skills.
posted by bonaldi at 6:13 PM on August 24, 2008

I had a great English lit teacher in high school who felt this particular void in the curriculum and filled it with a "Philosophy Club" which met every Tuesday and listened to him lecture on Socratic and Aristotelian thought for 50 minutes. Shabby replacement for the real thing, but I'm so grateful he did.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 6:22 PM on August 24, 2008

"What we've found looking at the final year exams of Queensland students is that those who have studied philosophy perform better across all subjects," Mr Ellerton said.

Correlation and causation, let's equate them!

""I now question absolutely everything, and I take everyone's word as opinion and not fact," Said says. "

This kid is going to go into uni and be that asshole. Congratulations, philosophy!
posted by jacalata at 6:34 PM on August 24, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Is philosophy commonly taught in American high schools? I'd love to go back to get an education degree if I thought I could actually use it to teach philosophy, but as far as I can gather, high schools seem to think that any advanced classses that don't offer AP or IB credit are a waste of time.
posted by bluejayk at 6:41 PM on August 24, 2008

Logic was available as a two year senior subject at one of the (public) highschools I attended in Queensland in the early 1990s (I feel so old typing that). It was seen a very specialised class for the 'nerds'. I would have loved to have enrolled but I turned up half-way through the year so was told it was not a good idea to start late. I was only there for one semester anyway. (And can someone fill me in - have they changed how school is organised in Queensland? When I was in highschool you did your Junior Certificate at the end of year 10, and year 11 & 12 were senior school, with your marks for those years going towards you final result)

Some primary schools are also teaching philosophy. I am not so sure about philosophy as a separate subject or method, it often smacks of wankery, but introducing students of any age to critical thinking skills is a good idea.

As an aside - I wonder how much of a change in thinking that the students credit to learning philosophy is really that, and how much of it is that inevitable change of thinking in teenagers as they grow up and start to think about the world around them?
posted by Megami at 6:56 PM on August 24, 2008

My guess would be that Philosophy (at least in a sense broader than Intro Logic) will never be taught in American schools

Good, because that would preclude routines like this:

MRS. HENDY: Oh! I never knew Schopenhauer was a philosopher!
MR. HENDY: Oh, yeah! He's the one that begins with an 'S'.
MRS. HENDY: Oh.
MR. HENDY: Umm, like, uh, 'Nietzsche'.
MRS. HENDY: Does 'Nietzsche' begin with an 'S'?
MR. HENDY: Uh, there's an 's' in 'Nietzsche'.
MRS. HENDY: Oh, wow. Yes, there is. Do all philosophers have an 's' in
them?
MR. HENDY: Uh, yeah! I think most of 'em do.
MRS. HENDY: Oh. Does that mean Selina Jones is a philosopher?
MR. HENDY: Yeah! Right! She could be! She sings about the meaning of
life.
MRS. HENDY: Yeah. That's right, but I don't think she writes her own
material.
MR. HENDY: No. Oh, maybe Schopenhauer writes her material.
MRS. HENDY: No. Burt Bacharach writes it.
MR. HENDY: But there's no 's' in 'Burt Bacharach'.
MRS. HENDY: Or in 'Hal David'.
MR. HENDY: Who's Hal David?
MRS. HENDY: He writes the lyrics. Burt just writes the tunes, only now,
he's married to Carole Bayer Sager.
MR. HENDY: Oh, waiter. This conversation isn't very good.
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:27 PM on August 24, 2008

Philosophy is taught in france during the last year of high school. The problem is that it's such a broad field it's pretty difficult to give the students a deep understanding of it in just a year. So it's mainly a very ambitous introduction course to philosophy that starts with the greeks and ends with 19th century german thinkers.
That's a lot to take in a year and it feels more like a prestigious feat of french education rather than a really useful class.
But yes, it creates a lot of jobs for those with a philosophy degree.
posted by SageLeVoid at 8:37 PM on August 24, 2008

Australian Philosophy Teachers Network is back online, for those interested...

...or maybe it's just me.
posted by robotot at 9:02 PM on August 24, 2008

We don't discuss the meaning of life.

I can't decide whether this is an example supreme arrogance or supreme modesty.
posted by treepour at 9:09 PM on August 24, 2008

My guess would be that Philosophy (at least in a sense broader than Intro Logic) will never be taught in American schools, at least not in most mainstream public schools. Consider a field like ethics - to really sink your teeth into the subject, you have to work around your own presuppositions. You must, in a very real sense, discard (only for the sake of argument, of course) your personal beliefs. In a country where "teaching the controversy" is seen as the better to forcing students to question their religious beliefs, does it really seem likely that over-sensitive school boards would allow a bunch of philosophers into the classroom?

I majored in Philosophy in my undergrad (I'm doing a Master's in Library Science, so I'm not completely useless, thanks) and Ethics- not any of the specialty ethics classes, Metaethics, or any of that- ended up being taken in my last semester, thanks to every other semester having conflicts with it. Ethics at the place I did my undergrad was an elective for most people, and lots of people took it who not only had little interest in philosophy but were simply flat-out unwilling to be, well, philosophical. For every student who was actually interested in philosophy, there were two who would open nearly every class participation with "Well, the Bible says..." Part of the problem, I think, is that our society doesn't just fail to prepare people to participate in philosophy, it actively encourages anti-intellectualism, valuing rhetoric over reason, and the elevation of partisanship over discourse. And sure, philosophers and philosophy majors and the like are subject to the same failings, but at least we're trying.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:16 PM on August 24, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I can't decide whether this is an example supreme arrogance or supreme modesty.

I would say just an acknowledgement of reality- the instant that you start talking about things that can't be observed, including ideas like "meaning", you're just engaging in Cartesian wankery.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:17 PM on August 24, 2008

Quebec has a compromise: no philosphy in high school (but there is talk of it), but 3 mandatory semester-long courses in cégep (a post high school institution that delivers 2-years pre-university degrees and 3-years technical degrees). It goes: 1-Intro to logic + greeks (pre-socratics, Socrates, Plato); 2-"The Human Being" (overview of various philosophers); 3-Ethics.

Cégep teachers get okay money, have a lot of vacations (1 month in january + june-august) and not too many discipline issues (the students mostly want to be in cégep, even though philosophy is often disliked).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:34 PM on August 24, 2008

Philosophy courses increasingly popular for US undergrads.
posted by binturong at 9:35 PM on August 24, 2008

the instant that you start talking about things that can't be observed, including ideas like "meaning", you're just engaging in Cartesian wankery.

So what makes philosophy something other than a branch of science? So long as you're talking about what's observed and not, say, observation as such or what it means to observe, then science does a much better job -- so much so that philosophy is rendered completely useless and meaningless.
posted by treepour at 9:54 PM on August 24, 2008

So what makes philosophy something other than a branch of science?

Well, one could make the argument that science is just a branch of philosophy. That notwithstanding, there are lots of questions in philosophy that can be approached systematically without falling into metaphysics and other wankery - for example, Searle's Chinese Room. I choose this example because its various responses (or solutions, or conclusions, or arguments) have major implications for psychology, philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence research. Philosophy is a funny thing - on the one hand, it's just a lot of thinking (and sharing, and communcation, and debate). On the other hand, thinking is hard work!
posted by OverlappingElvis at 10:09 PM on August 24, 2008

As long as you're not making things up about unseen gods and inaccessible phantom rulebooks, you can have some very productive discussions about ethics without descending into teh wanks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:28 PM on August 24, 2008

An anecdote:

I came home and my 10 year old brother is sitting in the corner working on his homework. A book is open on his lap, and he's clearly struggling with something. I often help him out, and it usually involves explaining how to multiply fractions or what an electron is.

He looks up to me.

Him: "Rowan, what is real?"

Me: "Well, uh, real is a term for things that exist."

Him: "Yeah, but what is it? Because Plato says that the real things are just like shadows on the wall, and that the real real things are behind the fire. But then what is the wall?"

Me: *gape*
posted by twirlypen at 2:08 AM on August 25, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Is philosophy commonly taught in American high schools?

The rich kids tend to get it, the poor kids tend not to. As per usual.

So what makes philosophy something other than a branch of science? So long as you're talking about what's observed and not, say, observation as such or what it means to observe, then science does a much better job -- so much so that philosophy is rendered completely useless and meaningless.

Some early 20th century philosophers thought this, and I suspect that many contemporary scientists think so as well. I think that a viewpoint that gets a lot of traction among contemporary philosophers is that philosophy helps to structure scientific methodology in an analogous way to math. You characterize science as all that is observed, and that's a bit too broad; there are important scientific questions about what questions to try to answer, which data to gather and what the gathered data means, and parts of philosophy and math offer guidance in these areas. Also, like math, philosophy has its own questions that don't intersect with science, and like math, these tend to be questions that are impacted to a lesser degree by observable data.

You seem to be hopeful that philosophy can be written off, but philosophy can be incredibly helpful and compelling. If you meet a philosopher who doesn't seem like an supremely arrogant antisocial dickbag (this can be difficult), you should buy him/her a whiskey and pay attention.
posted by Kwine at 4:12 AM on August 25, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

At public high school in New England there was both a general philosophy course offered and an ethics course.

If this is really all that unusual, I think it's because my school didn't have "Advanced Placement" college-prep courses, nor an American football program, both of which suck up lots of resources.
posted by XMLicious at 4:41 AM on August 25, 2008

This is the place for my LOLPHILOSOPHY link!

Can bad men make good brains do bad things?

Consider the following case: On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys...

posted by No-sword at 6:35 AM on August 25, 2008

the instant that you start talking about things that can't be observed, including ideas like "meaning", you're just engaging in Cartesian wankery.

Well, a lot of what we talk about, perhaps most of what we talk about, can't be directly observed or framed in terms of pure observation. The realm of abstract concepts, scientific laws, emotions, and notions such as love, responsibility, and democracy do not reduce to the field of unmediated observation or the direct (or technically enhanced) perception of the senses. Observation is not more central to knowledge than reason. If a physicist theorizes about non-observable particles, or if a scientist talks about the flash-point of carbon, observation is not the sum of what is going on. Not by a long shot. For instance, reading Hume or Kant or Peirce or Popper we come to realize how central the notion of logical inference is to knowledge: we infer causal links and build conceptual models that are based only partly on the apodictic self-evidence of first-hand observation. So the old empiricist vs. rationalist debate that animated early modern philosophy is still very useful for the epistemology of cognition and "justified true belief." Furthermore, the philosophy of mathematics raises the rather puzzling question of how abstract entities like numbers "hook on" to the world. If knowledge were simply reducible to pure observation, I would agree that much philosophy might qualify as wankery. But observation is only but one piece in the much larger puzzle of how knowledge is possible. Philosophy provides a renewed sense of how human cognition orders observation in order to establish patterns. Knowledge is not purely a question of passive observation. It's how we process our observations and the cognitions that accompany them (through language, science, art, emotion, logic, etc) that counts.
posted by ornate insect at 7:42 AM on August 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Is philosophy commonly taught in American high schools?

Intro to Philosophy was offered at my (suburban Texas) high school, and I found it really useful as an introduction - something designed to get us thinking about the fact that the questions were even out there. At least, it inspired me enough to study philosophy more seriously in college.

In the article, it says that the course is divided into "deductive logic, critical thinking and pure philosophy. Students are instructed in the teachings of the great philosophers as well as reasoning, argumentation and spotting fallacies." If that's actually accurate, I think it's a good balance. "Pure philosophy" for the introduction to the questions, and then the logic and critical thinking which are really at the foundation of what kids are supposed to be learning anyway, but which they never get laid out explicitly (which is a mistake, I think). One of the most useful things I learned from a philosophy class (in college, alas), was how to take apart an argument and see how the different points fit together, point A supporting point B, etc. It's something I realized in retrospect that teachers had been assuming we could do all through my high school years, but which was never actually explained.
posted by marginaliana at 8:42 AM on August 25, 2008

So what makes philosophy something other than a branch of science? So long as you're talking about what's observed and not, say, observation as such or what it means to observe, then science does a much better job -- so much so that philosophy is rendered completely useless and meaningless.

Science doesn't have an explanation of causation or several other metaphysical concepts that it takes as given. In the specific "Philosophy vs. Science" pissing contest people try to set up (and there really is no such pissing contest), what philosophy can do is provide a rigorous understanding of things like causation and knowledge that undergird the possibility of scientific understanding, but that are not properly part of science.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 9:08 AM on August 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Is philosophy commonly taught in American high schools?

The rich kids tend to get it, the poor kids tend not to. As per usual.

I should have specified above when I said they offered it at my high school -- this was a public school in a diverse area. I would be really interested in seeing the evidence for your assertion.
posted by Jaltcoh at 6:55 PM on August 25, 2008

I would say just an acknowledgement of reality- the instant that you start talking about things that can't be observed, including ideas like "meaning", you're just engaging in Cartesian wankery.

Ok, if you want to play this game, then the instant you start equating what makes sense exclusively with empirical, verifiable propositions, you're just engaging in Positivist wankery.

I assert, further, that neither of us has refuted one another or advanced any argument of substance.
posted by treepour at 10:23 PM on August 26, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You've mistaken an expression of contempt for rationalism for an argument. Bravo!
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:38 PM on August 27, 2008

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Teaching philosophy to high school students August 24, 2008 5:29 PM Subscribe

Teaching philosophy to high school students
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