Assuming that the AP course is appropriately designed, I second Eddy’s thought that students with AP credit ought to place out of Intro — which, at my College, is one of the courses required for the major in Philosophy, as well as being a prerequisite for many of the upper-level courses in the major.

(As a separate note of some interest, perhaps, the President and CEO of the College Board, David Coleman, was a Philosophy major at Yale. I believe he wrote his senior thesis on some aspects of Kant’s moral philosophy, if I remember correctly.)

Most people who major in philosophy come to the subject remarkably late in college, largely because they don’t have an accurate view of what philosophy is until they stumble into a philosophy course. Imperfect as it would be, a high school course in philosophy could go a long way to remedying this problem. If a 16 year old student takes a philosophy course in high school and loves what she discovers, she is much more likely to take additional philosophy courses in her first year of college, as Eddy has already said. Having an AP course in philosophy also signals that philosophy is a serious and central academic subject.

Sounds like a good idea. I think the difficult part would be constructing the Exam and grading procedures. If this is done well, then it will allay the fears about people getting credit for a poorly taught class. If students don’t do well on the exam (whether the fault is theirs or their teachers) they don’t get college credit. I think the route to more students is more people majoring or minoring in philosophy, not more people taking intro courses, so I’m willing to gamble one for the other. I think pt. #2 above by Nahmias is a good point too in that if this because wide spread we will have more people who want to be high school teachers majoring/minoring in philosophy. There are currently a number of subjects that have a built in career – teaching that subject in high school. Philosophy might be seen as a safer field to get a degree in, if it had that option.

Philosophy at the high school level is something that I have championed in casual conversation for a long time (as I’m sure is the case for many other philosophers). But reflecting on it more now, there are certain worries that I think need to be taken into consideration for any implementation of an AP course to be successful.

1) Teachers need to be adequately prepared for the material. Most of the other comments have raised this concern. It isn’t limited to philosophy either – I don’t wish unprepared teachers on any high school course (though it might be easier to wing it in, for example, biology, if one is teaching primarily rote facts from a textbook). It does seem especially difficult to do for philosophy, however, as hopefully the next point emphasizes.

2) A philosophy AP course should not just be literature review for philosophical authors. This is probably going to be a somewhat controversial remark, but it’s worth making, whether or not I argue for it successfully. One prima facie difficulty I see for a philosophy AP course is that testing has to be standardized for the entire country, which means a certain kind of test that accounts for differences in teacher and grader qualifications. The best model that exists now for a philosophy exam would be the AP literature exam. But how satisfying is that model? So far as I can tell, there are two important desiderata for introductory learning in philosophy: (i) to expose students to philosophical literature and arguments in a non-superficial way, and (ii) to teach philosophical reasoning and writing. The problem emerges, then, of how to construct a syllabus such that students read enough historically important philosophy, but also feel encouraged to present their own ideas and arguments as clearly as possible (that is to DO some philosophy themselves!). In particular, students ought to feel like their arguments and interpretations can be valuable if well argued. It would be a shame, for example, if AP philosophy students emerged from the course touting their expertise in ‘bullshitting’ their instructors, rather than feeling empowered by their newly acquired critical thinking and reasoning skills. The former is a trope I see associated with high school literary analysis often enough so as to be disconcerting. Students go on to write AP exams where they regurgitate accepted analysis positions, and leave feeling as though which sorts of analysis are accepted and which aren’t is an arbitrary matter! I’m highly skeptical that you can teach philosophy to high school students in a way that promotes a lot of open discussion and emphasizes the unique skills involved in doing philosophy while at the same preparing them to do well on a standardized exam.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion so far. It may be helpful to know that there are many people who given a great deal of thought to how philosophy may be taught in high school–e.g., the people in PLATO (http://plato-philosophy.org).

Twice a year, I visit the philosophy classes at Hinsdale Central High School, taught by Chris Freiler (also on the panel at the upcoming Central APA). I am very happy to report that his students are exceptionally well-prepared for philosophy in college. Indeed, I have had several of his former students pass through my classes at Northwestern, where they have excelled. By the end of their high school course, they are definitely comparable to Northwestern students who have taken introduction to philosophy. Chris has an MA in philosophy from NIU (and was a student of mine when I taught there); my sense is that some other high school philosophy teachers have similar qualifications, but this is certainly not universal. Matt Drabek mentioned above the possibility of philosophy professors running workshops to help provide training for high school teachers. I know that Mitch Green has done something like this through the NEH, and I would hope that there would be widespread interest in taking part. The broader point, though, is that there already is excellent pre-college instruction in philosophy taking place. The question to consider, then, is whether having an AP Philosophy exam would bring this to a wider group of students (without also bringing new problems into existence).

To me, there are several positive considerations in favor of the idea. One of them has been mentioned already (by, e.g., Senior Undergrad): it would probably help boost enrollments because there would be more incoming undergraduates with an awareness of what philosophy is like. Some high schools already do offer philosophy courses, but without a related AP exam, there is often trouble getting good enrollments for them. High school students are now highly attuned to the potential risks and benefits of everything they do. Philosophy courses are not an easy A, so there is some risk to their GPA. At the same time, AP courses provide a GPA boost, as well as the promise of college credit. With those benefits, many students will take a chance on something new. Without them, they may opt instead for US Government and Politics, Art History, Psychology, or Music Theory–all of which have AP exams.

In any case, I would very much like to encourage people to come to the APA session, with both positive and negative considerations.

I like Chris Surprenant’s comments and line of thinking about alternatives to an AP course. One thing that worries me with an AP course is that the kinds of schools that are in a position to offer such are most like to be suburban, upper middle class, probably private (but not necessarily so if the local property values are high and local public education well-funded), and largely white. i’d like to hear more about and support programs that bring philosophy into underfunded and less advantaged schools and neighborhoods, where they might make a difference beyond gaining college credit.

I’m a former philosophy instructor who now teaches high school AP English. We offer a one-semester Philosophy course (which I teach) and it (along with a philosophy discussion club) get a lot of interest at my school. My school is in suburban Atlanta and is a relatively mixed demographic.

As for who would teach the course, finding people who specialized in teaching philosophy would be hard, but a broad certification in Social Studies-Behvioral Sciences (where our course is housed) allows one to teach Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Philosophy electives.

To felonius screwtape’s comment about the kids taking the exam: if a student qualifies for free or reduced lunch, there is a fee reduction available for them. (At my school, FRL students can take any AP tests for free) This would encourage more of the non middle and upper class students to take the test.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/waivers/guidelines/ap?excmpid=MTG54-ED-1-appub

I would be very interested in the development of this process. I would love to offer this course.

After reading the comments, I was taken a little aback by how philosophers seem to view high school teachers. For instance, Matt Drabek’s “dystopian scenario” envisions “unqualified high school teachers blandly and poorly teach watered down historical biographies of philosophers and inaccurate and superficial presentations of their ideas, and then administer exams with questions written and graded by a testing company without philosophy expertise.” I’m not here to defend the College Board, but my students who take the AP Lit and AP Lang tests tend to pass the test, carry in some English credit to college, and do extremely well in college-level English (and Philosophy) courses. The College Board English courses are curated by people with degrees in English, many of whom are either (or both) college professors and classroom teachers. I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the case with a philosophy test as well.

Another Grad Student says “Teachers need to be adequately prepared for the material. Most of the other comments have raised this concern. It isn’t limited to philosophy either – I don’t wish unprepared teachers on any high school course ” This seems funny to me…why is there not an outrage about ‘unprepared college instructors’ on the same level? As a high school teacher, I’m evaluated six times a year. As a full-time college instructor, I was never evaluated once by my superiors. In ELEVEN YEARS, I never had a single in-class evaluation. I have known a LOT of terrible collegiate level teachers, from adjuncts to full professors. The claim seems more like a claim about philosophy’s ‘turf’ than anything else.

Given the recent discussion here about philosophy trying to ‘reach out’ to the more general community, both of these comments seem to imply that the best possible way for one to learn philosophy is by someone far more qualified than a mere high school teacher. By implication, of course, you would mean someone who had done a PhD in philosophy, which makes philosophy the sole province of a very small group of people. And, of course, it makes philosophy only accessible to the college bound, but offering philosophy in public schools would allow students who might not be college-bound a chance to explore it.

Baron et. al.,

This is something that I’ve wanted to see for years now, and I think it’s a wonderful idea. There’s a steadily growing body of information out there now suggesting that pre-college philosophy instruction confers a number of tangible benefits to students across many backgrounds and trajectories, and (at least in my experience) high school aged students tend to also have a lot of fun exploring the subject. While I was in grad school, I helped launch Columbia University’s philosophy outreach program, which paired graduate students in philosophy at Columbia with graduate students in Philosophy & Education at Columbia Teachers College in order to help New York area middle and high schools integrate philosophy into their curriculum. The program was (and still remains) extremely popular and successful, with involvement ranging from the facilitation of informal philosophy clubs, to guest lectures in other courses, to the design and implementation of full year-long accredited philosophy courses. The students, graduate instructors, teachers, and secondary school administrators almost all thought it was beneficial and great fun. I’ve also taught several high school level intensive philosophy courses during the summer over the last ten years with Johns Hopkins’ Center For Talented Youth program. Based on what I saw working with students in those two settings, I’m inclined to think that very many people at that age are naturally drawn to philosophical topics, and capable of surprisingly sophisticated philosophical reasoning, given a little guidance. A national AP course would be quite popular, I think, and would be a wonderful way to prime incoming first year college students to appreciate philosophy.

I can imagine two basic tracks such an AP course might take. One possibility is a class built like the more common “philosophy 101” curriculum, focusing on a historical overview of some of the most important figures, movements, and ideas from the history of philosophy. We might call this the “Great Ideas” philosophy AP. A student taking the Great Ideas type of class would (ideally) come out of it with a general sense of the trajectory of philosophy, some familiarity with major figures from different historical periods and their arguments, and the ability to analyze, compare, and contrast the views of different thinkers effectively. Critical reading and critical exegetical writing would be natural skills on which to focus.

A second possibility might be to focus less on a general historical survey and instead focus on the exploration of some of the problems that are of interest to philosophers today, and the methods used to tackle them. We might call this the “Philosophical Problems” AP philosophy. A student the Philosophical Problems type of class would (ideally) come out of it with a sense of what sorts of things are going on in philosophy today, what makes various problems interesting to philosophers, and how to rigorously approach complicated problems to better understand them. Critical reading and persuasive argumentative writing based on textual analysis would be natural skills to focus on there.

Each of these two approaches would have its associated advantages and disadvantages, and would leave students with skills and knowledge that, though overlapping in many respects, would also be distinct. I can imagine developing distinct assessment tools and curricula for each, with the choice of which course to pursue depending on the interests of the students, background of the instructors, and thematic fit with different secondary schools’ core curriculum. In an ideal case, the two classes might be offered in tandem: either in parallel or as part of a AP philosophy sequence: something like what the AP English Language and AP English Literature courses already do. Offering this sort of choice might also somewhat decrease the difficulty of answering questions centered around whether, how, and where a university should “count” the AP credit.

In either case, universities might choose, rather than issuing a waiver for a particular class, to allow the AP work to count as an elective toward a degree–work that yields collage credits toward completion, but doesn’t “excuse” a student from any particular class at the university. An approach like that would reward the student without the necessity of ensuring that all courses offered at all institutions are similar enough in content and approach to analogous courses at most major universities. This sort of pluralistic design would give the high school instructor some creative control over how his or her own course might work best given student talents and interests (along with the instructor’s interests and knowledge), as well as give college philosophy departments some say in how each course fits best into their own overall curriculum.

With some good curriculum guidelines developed by professional philosophers who also have an interest and background in pre-college philosophy, I think this could work remarkably well. I would hope that, among other things, courses like these in high school would help attract more members of traditionally underrepresented demographics–who frequently find themselves feeling pushed away from the discipline now when their first exposure to it comes in the form of a university seminar–to college philosophy.

I’m very anxious to see where this goes, and would like to help in any way I can. I think it’s a great idea, and long overdue for consideration.

i’ve been teaching a philosophical ethics class in a public school for ten years. It’s a very popular class…. it’s mostly just a historical review of the philosophical tradition for the first semester and then application of what we’ve learned in the context of contemporary moral dilemmas. Not sure how to test it in the vein of AP testing… maybe the prompts could be like high school ethics bowl problems and students evaluate the problem using a philosophical framework….this could work. How do I get involved in helping to make this happen?