Philosophy in high schools Part Deux

So I wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald a month ago about philosophy in high schools. They got me to write a follow-up article, paid me for it, but never actually printed it...in any case, I'm tired of waiting, so I'm probably breaking like ten copyright laws right now but my blog was in dire need of something new. So here it is.

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In response to last week’s article on philosophy in high schools, the Herald was contacted by University of Sydney lecturer Dr Luke Russell, who has been teaching a HSC philosophy course titled Mind and Morality since 2001. Written and developed by Dr Russell during his PhD year, the course teaches year 11 and 12 students introductory level philosophy to the same standard as first-year university courses; its three main topics are philosophy of mind, personal identity and ethics. The course is taught partially at participating schools and partially at the Sydney University campus.

“I’ve designed Mind and Morality for students who are already doing well in their school subjects and are looking for an extra challenge,” Dr Russell said.
“It gives students analytical thinking skills and improves their ability to present a complex argument step by step.”
Dr Russell promotes the course in NSW schools, forming strong word-of-mouth support connections between students. However, numbers are still low: only around 80 students participate in it every year from across NSW. This is due to the fact that Mind and Morality counts as both a preliminary HSC unit as well as part of a future university degree, a characteristic that means the Board of Studies must place a limit on the number of students that can do the course. This, Dr Russell says, is not altogether unfavourable.
“There is a real advantage in having smaller class sizes, and that is the fact that we can have tutorial-style discussions at any point. The course has grown over the past few years and I think it will expand further in the future when we will offer more classes.”

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Paul is an ex-student of Dr Russell’s Mind and Morality course, and is now completing a Bachelor of Advanced Science at the University of Sydney with a major in Philosophy. She says studying philosophy in high school opened the door towards a better understanding of the world.
“I was very interested in the morality part of the course,” Chloe said. “I really enjoyed examining the arguments for and against various normative
ethical theories. I realised that some of my previous cultural relativist ideas (as I now know them) were pretty implausible and I think it’s made a difference to how I approach learning. I have also become far better at structuring my arguments and communicating with writing.”
Chloe believes anyone can study philosophy, no matter how young.
“There is no real limit. Three-year-old children ask philosophical questions
that the Ancient Greeks wrestled with. It’s all a matter of appropriating it to the right level.”

Daniel Wodak, 21, completed the Mind and Morality course while he was in year 11 at Sydney Boys High School in 2003, and went on to do the Philosophy Distinction Course the following year. He is now halfway through an Honours degree in Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
“As nerdy as it sounds, I really enjoy [studying philosophy],” Daniel said.
“Dealing with thought experiments about whether you'd push a fat man in front of a train to save five children is a lot more fun than real work.”
Wodak enrolled in Mind and Morality in order to try something different; what he found was something complex and challenging.
“I think that high school education in NSW really struggles to foster critical and analytical thinking. There have been some notable and laudable attempts at rectifying this, but for the most part, education is still far too focused on studying too many subjects with too little depth.”
“I think that the reason I enjoyed Mind and Morality so much is that the course was intended to test our ability to delve into one particular issue and understand it to the best extent that we could. We were encouraged to develop our own thoughts, rather than recite the thoughts of others.”

Sarah Kennedy Bates, 18, also chose to pursue philosophy in university after studying Mind and Morality in the summer school session in 2007.
“I believe that studying philosophy is beneficial to all
students, regardless of their academic focus,” she said. “Whilst there is an HSC distinction philosophy course in NSW, this is limited to accelerated students. This exclusivity and elitism helps to create the idea that philosophy is irrelevant to your average student, which is, of course, not true at all.”

Dr Russell agrees. He says the benefit of high school students studying a course like Mind and Morality is that they get to think hard about important questions that are ignored elsewhere in the HSC curriculum, such as ‘What is a person?’, ‘What are beliefs and emotions?’, and ‘How do we figure out what is morally right or wrong?’. “Our students find these philosophical questions fascinating and deeply relevant to their everyday lives,” he said. “Students appreciate being given room to question and argue in class, and lots of them say that studying philosophy has really changed their lives. It would be great if philosophy were taught more generally in high schools across Australia.”