[Bups-dis] Philosophy for Children

[Duncan Crowe]

It's not really a substantive reply so much as a general remark:

The one worry I have about the concept is that 'teaching philosophy to 
children' will come out in practice as 'teaching A-level (or GCSE, if 
there is such a thing) philosophy to children.

Now, I cannot claim personal experience not having studied philosophy at 
high school myself, but I've taken the time to acquaint myself with the 
AS, A-level, Higher and Advanced Higher philosophy courses (I figured it 
would be useful for open day stuff and I had time to kill) and it really 
does strike me that - at least as they present themselves in specimen 
exam papers - they are pretty much useless for the purpose in mind.

The reason for this is that teaching children about Plato's parable of 
the cave etc may serve some broadly edifying purpose, is quantifiably 
examinable on and may arguably set people up well for studying 
philosophy at university (the jury is out on this one; personally I 
incline the other way on it, but we can grant that this is true for the 
sake of argument). As far as teaching school pupils to be critical 
thinkers however, it doesn't strike me that getting them to remember who 
advanced the ontological argument and what Gaunilo's counter example to 
it was is particularly useful.

Now it may be that in the process of presented pupils with, say, 
Descartes a teacher of even only moderate competence will encourage the 
children to open the minds and think critically about many of the 
presuppositions they personally adhere to, however at the end of the day 
this isn't what they are tested on. What they are tested on appears to 
be more like a watered down version of a university curriculum which 
ultimately resembles more English, History or Religious Studies in terms 
of the skill base it uses (and indeed, History could claim to be the 
victor here; at least in Scotland there is a distinct section of the 
exam for 'source handling skills' which is essentially critical thinking).

I appear to be involved in an on again off again argument with a friend 
of mine about the Kennedy assassination. I thought the matter had been 
settled long ago before it came up again the other day. He had argued to 
me that Kennedy must have been assassinated from e.g. the grassy knoll 
due to the argument favoured by the likes of Oliver Stone and Bill Hicks 
that his head should not have gone back and to the left if the shooter 
was back and to the left. It should have gone forward and right; 'that's 
just common sense'. Of course common sense is largely conditioned by 
experience, and one of the experiences we've all had is watching 
Hollywood movies which introduce their own magical physical laws when it 
comes to ballistics. In reality if I shoot something with a bullet and 
the bullet passes through, the object I shoot will barely move 
(particularly if it is as large as a person). By nothing more advanced 
than the conservation of momentum we know that the maximum effect a 
bullet I fire from a gun I'm holding can have on my target is the same 
as the recoil of that gun upon me. But if the bullet passes through then 
only a fraction of the force of the recoil is passed to the target. On 
the other hand, if something removes a significant portion of your head, 
and matter is propelled outwards (blood etc) then a force will be 
created in the opposite direction (i.e. towards the direction of the 
firing of the bullet). I have explained this to him several times, he 
will not listen. I have shown him footage from popular television shows 
(Penn and Teller's Bullshit, and Mythbusters) which demonstrate these 
fairly simply principles with live ammunition. What he does do is take 
out a pad of paper and start writing equations, because most 
disturbingly of all he's a physicist. The studying of physics has led 
him to overestimate the veridically of his own intuitive grasp of the 
world and leads him to favour abstruse calculations (which come off as 
frankly rather kooky; they've not worked out for him yet) in favour of 
simply thinking about basic facts about the way the physical world 
operates and how they apply to real life situations when we get rid of 
our 'common sense' presuppositions.

I offer this as a cautionary tale. This is not what I was to be the 
effect of teaching philosophy to children. I liked that the petition 
stated 'philosophy/critical thinking'. I believe it is important to 
stress the second of those two items. Philosophy is better serviced by 
teaching critical thinking to school children rather than 'philosophy' 
(the watered down thing examined at the end of Higher/A-level). Society 
in general would appear to be better serviced too.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing /against /A-level philosophy and 
certainly don't doubt the work put in by anyone on this list that did 
it, as I imagine many of you did. What I do doubt is the validity of it 
for the task in question; namely honing the ability of school children 
to think critically. I find myself very puzzled when I try to imagine 
what an exam paper which would do these things would look like. I 
suppose it would be a cross between IQ test logic ('if all sergs are 
sprogs and all sprogs are clogs which of the following is true...'), a 
name-that-fallacy game and the kind of source handling stuff done in 
history (would you expect the free written instructions on how to tie a 
bow-tie given on a website of a company which makes it's money selling 
videos on how to do this to be clear and easy to follow? Please give 
reasons for your answer). I'm tempted towards the notion, however, that 
an examination might do more harm than good. Any exam lends to the 
discipline a lack of appeal for those on the bottom of the educational 
ladder. I can remember some of the answers given to the exam questions 
in compulsory religious education lessons in high school ('Who was the 
founder of Buddhism?' 'Donald duck') made me suspect that not only was 
nothing actually learned but, if anything, acting as if the exam, rather 
than the knowledge, was the focus of the lessons actually decreased the 
level of attention given.

At the risk of losing all credibility, I honestly believe one of the 
things I did in my youth which heavily sharpened the skills I rely on 
when doing philosophy was nitpicking television programmers and films. 
I'm not entirely sure why but it became a standard practice amongst 
people I knew to pick holes in light entertainment, but I'm really 
believe this idle pettiness honed my ability for abstract criticism that 
has probably helped me more than the first time I read and failed to 
fully grasp the Tractatus (for example).

Anyway, back to Norman Malcolm,

Best,
Duncan Crowe.