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Is A level philosophy hard?

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They don't seem enthused with anything Christianity-based with the exception maybe of Situation Ethics (which I was surprised to see on the spec given that it has been pretty much ignored since the 70s :lol:

), and it can be hard to get them going sometimes. In general though I have a good bunch. Re Buddhism etc, it's the school's decision and not mine! I'd sooner do Indian philosophy all the time tbh :lol:

Ah I take that to mean that you are actually teaching the religious studies A level rather than AQA Philosophy A level? It's a bit confusing because all the 4 religious studies exam boards (OCR, AQA, WJEC, EDEXCEL) have the same division into three papers - a religion (of the schools choosing), ethics and philosophy. The AQA Philosophy A level is different from these. As a tutor I have to be on top of all of these different syllabuses.. not sure how I manage it sometimes.

Situation ethics comes up in all 4 RS exam boards - it is a bit strange to include it yes but I do enjoy teaching it because of the questions it raises about whether humans have progressed since medieval times in the sense of being civilised enough to be trusted with more autonomy.. or whether we're just as bad as we always were.

You could always try to move to a school where they have chosen Buddhism instead of Christianity!

Reply 21

jumbojim56877

Original post by Aj123456aj

I was wondering if A level philosophy is hard and what the chances are for me getting an A*? I didn’t do philosophy for gcse.

I was gonna say absolutely do not take philosophy but then I remembered I took Religious education and philosophy was just one part. It was hell because it was all new and teachers were cleless and stressed out too and so was my class. It was A LOT fo content. It was a religion- my school chose Islam, ethics and philosophy. Out of the three when things were really stressful philosophy was the favourite and I actually enjoyed it and wished it was just the whole course. So I would say yes go for it, you don't need to have done it for gcse. The arguments of how the world was created, about god existing is all philosophy which you would've covered in RE GCSE. And now that teachers have so much more understanding of the course it should be decent. I did A levels from 2016-2018. Now that I typed the date I feel so stupid because it was such a long time ago and I'm talking as if it was recent lol. it feels like I just did A levels last year