[VLM]

Your post is insightful. Imagine trying to teach philosophy like American schools teach math. That would be unimaginably awful. Which makes me thankful that (most?) American high schools don't offer philosophy class. Superficially it would be good for the students if done right, but since it will not be done right...

Even worse imagine history taught that way. Whoops that's pretty much how they do teach history and (coincidentally?) that doesn't work too well either.

[joel_perl_prog]

Well... I don't comment often, but as someone with a B.A. in mathematics who minored in philosophy, let me follow up on your comment:

Would a philosophy class really be good for high school students? Broadly speaking, I mean, not those 1 out of 100 students who are reading Sartre or Nietzsche (or even Dostoyevsky or Kafka) on their own, already, anyway.

A survey course, I mean, a 101-type of course, like you would see at a University. My feeling is that a course in introductory logic is the #1 most useful course that's missing in high school right now.

And again, there are going to be a few students for whom this would be redundant, but something like 99/100 students do not understand the machinery of thinking. If there's one thing my university education taught me, it's the machinery of thinking, carefully and rigorously. Most people never learn this, and I feel like this then precludes any understanding of anything advanced and even slightly abstract--and that includes both philosophy and (of course!) mathematics.

[fyi80]

> that a course in introductory logic

This is barely touched in standard geometry text books. 2-column proofs and all that.

But most people don't notice it, and it deserves far more treatment. Many of the smartest people I know attended special gifted programs in K-12 that did teach formal logic and informal critical thinking skills.

(correlation != causation, though)

[doktrin]

Philosophy is mandatory as part of the IB curriculum. The course I'm thinking of is typically named "Theory of Knowledge", and while formally an epistemology course, it can be taught quite broadly.

I can't speak to anyone else's experience, but I found being exposed to Philosophy while still in high school to be quite meaningful, and went on to dual-major in it while in college.

[dagw]

As another IB student I can concur that I found the Theory of Knowledge class very rewarding. And the things I learnt in that class have probably given more than the stuff I learnt in math or physics class, despite going off to study physics at university and then switching to math.

That being said I also remember being one of the few students who felt the course interesting and worthwhile. Most of the other students saw it as a waste of time and focused mainly on how to get a good enough grade to not affect their overall average while doing the least amount of work possible.