Having thought for years now that they should be teaching philosophy in schools, I was both gratified and amused to read this Guardian article saying that very thing. Scotland, home of the Enlightenment, was the unsurprising location for a study confirming the intellectual value of philosophy.
Playgrounds throughout the land may soon ring with the cut and thrust of neo-Socratic dialogue after Clackmananshire council yesterday become the first local authority in Britain to announce plans for philosophy lessons for children from the nursery to secondary school level.
A few points come immediately to mind. Firstly, the “intelligence gain” experienced by the schoolchildren who took part in the study is hardly a surprising outcome. Thinking is how our minds develop; we learn mathematics by doing it, not just being told about it. Philosophy does not leave us unchanged: we cannot take back insight, or afterwards, stop appreciating and assessing the world in the new ways we have learned. It’s intriguing that the prototypical philosophical question they mention—“Is it ever OK to lie?”—was one which Wittgenstein himself pondered as a child.
So why has philosophy has been left out of the school curriculum all this time? Was it the fear that it would be difficult to teach? Or are people who can think for themselves simply not a desirable outcome for the government and the school system? I’m not saying only those who’ve studied philosophy can think for themselves, but philosophy helps: learning how to argue—the virtues of good arguments and the flaws of bad ones—sharpens our minds.
Assessing the claims put before us by friends, colleagues, governments, corporations or the media is just as important now as it was to the philosophers of the Enlightenment. It’s something that everyone should learn, and while most of us do learn it to some extent or other, even in the absence of training, we don’t all learn it as well as we might. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where we discussed things and argued about issues. We argued while cooking supper and while doing the washing. We argued about politics, ethics, science and literature. Sometimes I think we’d argue about anything.
Not everyone has a family like that: not everyone finds themselves engaged in complex debates on a range of subjects from a young age. Teaching philosophy in school will reach the children who don’t have the opportunities I did to develop as a critical thinker and a user of language. Education is the best tool we have to level the playing field and open up undreamed-of possibilities for those now suffering in poverty that is not merely financial but intellectual and cultural.
The skills that one learns when studying philosophy can be found in other disciplines too, but philosophy has a distinctive subject matter as well. It’s not a matter of mere intellectual curiosity, but something of central importance to our understanding of the world. Epistemology and metaphysics have deep ramifications for our interpretations of science, while debates in ethics and political philosophy serve to shape the way we act as social and political beings. The men who wrote the American constitution did not draw their ideas from a vacuum: in forming a new nation and a new set of political institutions they were guided by the work of political philosophers such as John Locke.
That philosophy has been neglected in the school curriculum is deeply unfortunate, and hopefully something that will be rectified before too long. Children would benefit hugely from learning about some of the ideas that underpin our society’s conceptions of the world, and how they themselves can critically engage with the things they are told. Science is nothing without scepticism, and perhaps if we raise a few more sceptics we will at the same time raise more scientists, which apparently is the latest matter of concern.
I might be more sympathetically disposed towards the government if they chose to infantilise their citizens a little less with all their harping on about respect and responsibility whilst depriving them of the tools they need to gain a better understanding of the world they live in. Philosophy is as much a part of this as so-called “core skills” in English and Maths.
That’s one of the things I liked most about my time at Seattle University. Like most (all?) Jesuit schools, they emphasized philosophy, history, and literature at the core of every education. And, as the Jesuits do, social justice was a central idea.
It’s unfortunate that here in the US you need to spend significantly more to attend a private school to hear people talking about ethics and responsibility.
~ Eric #