Corgan Sow

I have some questions about how philosophy is being taught. Since majority of II members here are Americans, I would touch on that. Is it taught in public schools? Is it a compulsory subject? Are there conflicts in the syllibus when there are anti-religion issues to tackle (like Bertrand Russell or Nietzche)?

Personally, I have a conflict of that in my country's educational system. Our system has zero emphasis on philosophy, figures like plato, kant and socrates are covered in Historical books and are very brief. My country has a childishly absurd Moral Studies paper compulsory to take before finishing high school. We are taught to memorize 80 moral values and ethics and apply it in Moral Studies paper which answers are...objective. As a result, many brilliant students flunked or get mediocre grades and occationally illiterate students get "A", which is banal IMHO. Worst, our country is a laughing stock as Moral Studies are also compulsory in university and collage. You can imagine people like me imbued with teachings of Confucius, Kant answering questions like; "How should Annie rescue the drowning man in the river? On what moral consequences and neglegence can occur if she attempt to save him? Elaborate by giving EXACT moral and ethic that applies to the situation."

That is all and thank you for reading.

Skepticos

In the United States, philosophy is not taught as a subject in public schools. Students can elect to take courses in philosophy when they get to college, though; and even a few majors require some philosophy courses. But in grades K-12 (public grade school), there is no philosophy offered at all. I believe the exception to this may be private religious schools.

- Skepticos

Aethari

I took a one-semester introductory philosophy class in my senior year of high school. It was really light-weight stuff, and didn't deal with any specific figures. Essentially, we covered realism/idealism/existentialism and a few moral theories. That is all we got done because of the ultra-slow pace that seems to be required in all public school classes.

-Aethari

Feather

Our public school kids can barely manage to write their own names, much less think critically. A philosophy class would be seen as useless by the corporate whores and political morons that control the purse strings of public education, too.

So no, we don't have a philosophy class in our public K-12 schools in most places.

galiel

Just curious: which corporate whore do you work for, and for which political moron did you vote?

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

monkey mind

Hmm, it sounds even worse over here in alberta canada. Here you are lucky to have philosophy offered as an optional course in your high school. I don't think many of the high schools have it. I've found the english teachers would provoke some critical thinking, but not in a lot of depth.

Morals are touched on in a most benign way in a course called "career and life management skills". It is more like a course in common sense. To be honest, if you need to be taught the stuff in that course I don't understand how you survived to the age of 16.

And as far as the universities go, it seems to me that event hey are becomming nothing more than job training sites for the big corporations. People are certainly in no way encouraged to take philosophy.

Very sad indeed.

Corgan Sow

I honestly till this day have no clue either. Maybe it was thanks to a dedicated Moral lecturer I met at 17 when she also felt she's like an ass teaching a group of adults like in pre-school. She talked more on other stuff and covered MS when she felt it was essentially critical...for our grades.

Answerer

Well, I don't think philosophy needs to be taught, its already there when we first questioned about our surroundings and tried to formulate some answers for our own satisfactory. Of course, our answers changed as we grew older and picked up new knowledge on the way. In short, its just a process of our life-long learning experiences.

[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Answerer ]</p>

Feather

I work for the corporate whores that donate to UF (I am a graduate student Fellow there). And I don't vote, because it just encourages them ("them" being the politicians).


[ October 22, 2002: Message edited by: Feather ]</p>

galiel

'nuff said.