Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?
Discuss the merits and deficiencies of political theories and philosophical questions.
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View Poll Results: Should Philosophy be compulsory for all UK students?
Yes. 42 31.82% No. 38 28.79% They should actively encourage it, and 'no'. 47 35.61% They should actively discourage it (xD?) 5 3.79%
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Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?*Update: thanks for the continually flowing input, It's quite helpful in building my own view
What's your opinion?
When I say 'philosophy' I mean Philosophy as the subject, of course.
Personally I find it hard to justify not at least encouraging philosophy as a subject to be taught. These are my main reasons:
- It rewards comprehensive capacities and the exercising of it to come to a rationally maintained and formulated argument
- It is very much logical, and can be exemplified in topics like 'reason and experience'
- It seperates fact from fabrication
- It isn't as clear-cut and thus easily 'memorisable' than say subjects like History (unsure on the effectiveness of my example there as I haven't taken it- of course history is important too!)
- It encourages free thought and rewards an ability to think for yourself and to defend it and show awareness of why a view is right
- Let's face it, subjects like history and geography are important for some, but for many others, less important. My point is this: philosophy isn't a subject but more of a collaberation of free-thought and claims to truth; I hope you get what I mean when I say that philosophy emancipates you from formulaic work on other subjects
P.S: I'm not hating on other subjects in putting forward this view.
Philosophy can be applied to anything: for example my previous sentence can be justified because:
- truth comes partially and I may be ignoring the downsides of having philosophy taught compulsorily
- having an incorrect view voiced keeps my argument fresh and 'living'
- it is to presume infallibility to stop others putting forward their view
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Mill
for the win 
I'd like to add that out of all my subjects I take, philosophy is the one I really have to think in. I take Politics and Economics too, but to be honest whilst they both have elements of comprehension they are quite basic and you get marks for just memorising paragraphs in the textbook.
Maybe the other subjects are just taught poorly and/or philosophy is taught well and so it looks relatively more important and/or philosophy perhaps seems as simple as other subjects too? What's your view?
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In response to a few points I'd like to add that philosophy is not a statement of facts but rather a kind of substance if you'd like to call it that. It takes a topic, say the nature of knowledge and provides a platform for arguments. It is by no means snobbish because it wants epistemological precision! Now if you want to say Philosophy is irrelevant, fair enough you're entitled to your opinion, and heck, you may even be right. But it is just as inconsistent to allow many more GCSE/A-Level/Degree programmes whilst maintaining such a position.
That is my belief on the matter, personally.
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EDIT #2: Why the neg? I'm merely putting forward a question and a position. If it's a neg on the position, not the question, fair enough! :P Although a reason for the neg if it's the former, would be informative
Last edited by TheSelfAcknowleged; 24-06-2012 at 20:13. -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?Yes, it would provide people the opportunity to think for themselves about God and not blindly follow religion. In RE lessons they should teach basic philosophy but I don't think we should force people to take an actual course in it, say at A level.
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?Seems like pretty normal language tbh. Rich coming from you and your "pretentious" fun, anyway.(Original post by When you see it...)
No it ****ing well shouldn't be. It is a bit of pretentious fun, nothing more.
Also, did you just swallow a thesaurus or something? -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?It displays rational capacities, however. It's relevance is really quite irrelevant :P For example, when are you going to use historical, concise geographical and other basic knowledge in your life? It's not really pretentious because it involves deep thought.(Original post by When you see it...)
No it ****ing well shouldn't be. It is a bit of pretentious fun, nothing more.
Also, did you just swallow a thesaurus or something?
How have you got to the conclusion that philosophy is 'pretentious'? It is a subject not a person.
If using such a vocabulary means I've swalled a thesaurus, then yup I have :P -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?But my point is this: history, geography and other subjects are just as irrelevant to the 'real world'. My point isn't that it is useful, rather it displays your potential! Please give me a list of 'useful' subjects that you consider important.(Original post by Jordan_1)
Think I'd rather do useful subjects thanks.
This is a common misconception: philosophy isn't for God-lovers, God-haters, rational people or irrational, or even good or bad people. It's a debate over beliefs: surely education should at least partially consist of exercising faculties irrespective of it's real-life application? It also helps differentiate between the intellect of candidates for certain positions. -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?While it might give all these philosophy graduates something to do I don't think it's conducive to society to focus too much on 'philosophical' questions at too young an age. 'Logical' reasoning, analysis, argumentation, and solutions can be provided by the simpler subjects, at least up to the undergraduate level. Besides, it would be worthless in the eyes of universities.
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?I especially agree with this. Have you purposefully missed out normative ethics? Because I dislike discussing normative ethics too :P(Original post by Id and Ego seek)
Only if it incorporates political philosophy, logic and how to construct rational arguments, and meta-ethics. -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?It's a nice idea, but in reality, it would become a joke subject like RS at GCSE. Many students before A Level stage are just mentally not in the mindset to study philospohy. I can imagine the uproar at my previous (low performing state) school, where things like "why do we have to do philosophy. It's bull****." will be said.
It will be a nightmare to teach to students who don't want to learn it, teachers will avoid it and it will become a necessary evil for the school who dnnt want to do it, but are required to.
Also, when the majority of low performing state school pupils are going to end up in vocational manual jobs, what is the aim of philospohy. On a very pragmatic level, it is no use whatsoever to them.
Give philosophy the respect it deserves and leave it as optional. That doesn't mean it should be encouraged for students aiming at academia
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?If you're speaking literally I'm pretty sure that is a myth?(Original post by Formerly Helpful_C)
No, because then it rewards people who use the right side of their brain, whilst punishing those who use the left side. How is that really fair?
By the way, Maths is more specific than philosophy; should we ban maths? No. I perhaps say we should instead strongly encourage it.
Life's not fair but we can give employers and people themselves greater awareness of where they can improve. Then again I may be guilty of advocating one conception of the good life (i.e. deep and rigorous 'intellectually' based thought) over perhaps less intellectually rigorous subjects? -
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It would not be a bad idea. It might just help people to start thinking for themselves and develop crucial critical thinking tools and not be "docile bodies" as Foccault would say. However care must be taken to introduce students to the very basics before introducing them to more complex concepts.
It would surely be a disaster trying to teach 9th graders post-modernism or Derridian deconstruction when such things are so dense.
This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?You've convinced me to switch to the 'encourage and no' part of the poll. Shame I can't change my vote! :P I do think in retrospect GCSE may be a inappropriate area to start Philosophical studies.(Original post by AspiringGenius)
It's a nice idea, but in reality, it would become a joke subject like RS at GCSE. Many students before A Level stage are just mentally not in the mindset to study philospohy. I can imagine the uproar at my previous (low performing state) school, where things like "why do we have to do philosophy. It's bull****." will be said.
It will be a nightmare to teach to students who don't want to learn it, teachers will avoid it and it will become a necessary evil for the school who dnnt want to do it, but are required to.
Also, when the majority of low performing state school pupils are going to end up in vocational manual jobs, what is the aim of philospohy. On a very pragmatic level, it is no use whatsoever to them.
Give philosophy the respect it deserves and leave it as optional. That doesn't mean it should be encouraged for students aiming at academia
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?So you're saying philosophy at A-Level is 'worthless'? I totally disagree (if so): it's the only subject I really feel I have to work hard in consistently (mentally) to actually achieve a good grade!(Original post by Zedd)
While it might give all these philosophy graduates something to do I don't think it's conducive to society to focus too much on 'philosophical' questions at too young an age. 'Logical' reasoning, analysis, argumentation, and solutions can be provided by the simpler subjects, at least up to the undergraduate level. Besides, it would be worthless in the eyes of universities. -
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Re: Should Philosophy be mandatory for all secondary school students in the UK?Just had 4 hours of philosophy per week during my final year of high school as part of my scientific french baccalaureate.
I was sceptical at first, but it's quite interesting I definitely kept in my memory some of that knowledge, it makes you feel smarter
