Monday, January 14, 2008

Philosophy in schools

I stumbled upon this short article today from Thoughts, Arguments and Rants. It's about the rise in popularity of philosophy in Scottish schools. That brought me joy. But it also reminded me of how that's far from probable in the US. I would love for elementary-high school age kids to learn philosophy (and so, I'm sure, would some of them), but there are so many obstacles to that ever happening (not least of which is the lack of teachers comfortable with or qualified to teach it). The only high school philosophy class I've ever heard of in the US has been at a private religious high school. But, you never know....

(If my year in a French high school has taught me anything, it has taught me that I couldn't spend the rest of my life teaching high schoolers... so alas, I could not switch career paths and try to become a high school philosophy teacher...)

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