UK Education Union Leader: Teach Philosophy in Schools
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, the largest education in the UK, as called for the nation’s schools to teach philosophy, according to The Guardian.
The UK government this past summer launched a review of the national curricula for students up to age 16.
Mr. Kebede sees making room for philosophy in the curriculum as a way of making sure students have an opportunity for, and education in, discussing “difficult world topics,”—something he sees many schools avoiding.
He says:
The number one driver preventing schools from being able to allow space for children to discuss the difficult topics in the world around them is that they have so much to do in the curriculum elsewhere to meet performance targets.
I think we should embed philosophy for children across the curriculum and reduce curriculum content. I used to teach philosophy for children. It’s a dialogic approach that allows children to form their own opinions and come to a clearer understanding themselves of the world around them. But it’s not always easy to find the time to do that in today’s education system.
The proposal seems occasioned by the conflict in the Middle East and disagreement over whether and how it should be discussed in the schools. See The Guardian for more.
The government curricular review is continuing, and is accepting suggestions from the public.
I fully agree that teaching philosophy (and ethics, civics and social responsibility, and Stoicism) will go a long way to improve education provision and society at large. Under the last Conservative government I wrote several letters to the DfE on the benefits of introducing and making philosophy a core subject. I have been a secondary school science educator and pastoral middle leader since 2000.
A small clarification/correction. The call is not to teach philosophy in schools, as your header and opening sentence suggest. Philosophy is to some extent *already* taught as part of secondary education (11-16 years) in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as part of Religious Studies.* This is not a compulsory subject, but it is very widely taught. Philosophy is, however, only a small part of the Religious Studies syllabus, and, as you might guess, it is largely restricted to philosophy of religion and ethics. In post-16 education, there is a Religious Studies A-level, which again includes philosophy of religion and ethics, as well as a dedicated Philosophy A-level, which covers in addition epistemology and philosophy of mind. These qualifications are not available at all schools and colleges, but they are quite widely taught.
The call, then, is not to teach philosophy, but to “embed it across the curriculum”, which presumably means incorporate it into other subjects and/or build it into other aspects of UK schooling (for example, what is referred to as “personal development”).
*Scotland follows a different system, and I can’t speak to that.
I quite agree that teaching philosophy will go a long way in allowing students to come to terms with real world situation. It will also bridge the gap between theory and practice, courses like ethical foundations of education,logic, metaphysics, epistemology should be introduced into the curriculum at different levels so that students can come to terms with certain concepts at early stage by putting into practice at a later stage of their life.