School

Stabshauptmann

Is philosophy going to become a leaving cert subject in the near future. I was just thinking back to my religion class and how I droped it. I have a sibling who has religion for a Juniour cert subject and I just felt that Philosophy would be more appropriate/worthwhile. Then someone else said there were plans to do just that, any info??

[Maybe education is more appropriate :dunno]

Agent Smith

well, it's not on the cards, afaik, but if you are intrested in studing philosophy, the school of philosophy in both ballsbridge and donnybrook are exelent places to study, they also run a school which i attended untill last july,

if you want more detail, just send me a pm, i have the number here somewhere, and i'm not too crazy posting phone numbers on the internet...

JOE

Stabshauptmann

no Im in colledge, just always considered the RE class in school a waste of time (more so because of the school and the teacher than the actual subject, though I did have problems with its one sidedness too)

DadaKopf

We had a 'philosophy' class in transition year when I was in school. Philosophy is an essential part of the French curriculum. However, I don't think Irish people grant philosophy the same importance as the French do, so I'd be worried teaching standards would be low and that people would actually be put off learning philosophy at third level because of a constant barrage of anti-philosophy comments by idiot teachers.

That said, I would like to see a subject that combines philosophy, politics, civics and creative writing - our curriculum needs to instill independent, critical thinking.

Without serious changes to the structure of the educational and university competition process, any 'questioning' subject like philosophy would be reduced to nothing and despised by all students for being so whacked out.

chewy

philosophy, politics, civics and creative writing

im sorta surprised you put those together but at the same time you have a point.. itd be great to have class in such but the independent thought etc would have to be brought across and thought in all subjects and in the fabric of the school so er maybe not...

i have some links on it somewhere...

of course i'd love to know what teachers are thought it seems to take years for the teaching body to catch up with the real world

simu

Yeah, in France the average person is less intimidated by philosophy than the average Irish person, having been exposed to some at school - I think that's really cool. As for whether it would be taught well in Irish schools - I presume the teachers would be people who have studied philosophy up to degree level and you'd think that anyone who had spent that much time on the subject would be fairly passionate about it. On the other hand, maybe not, I know plenty of people who've done languages for their degrees but refuse to speak these same languages.

ecksor

simu wrote:

I presume the teachers would be people who have studied philosophy up to degree level and you'd think that anyone who had spent that much time on the subject would be fairly passionate about it. On the other hand, maybe not, I know plenty of people who've done languages for their degrees but refuse to speak these same languages.

I think "maybe not" is going to be the case. I'm sure that most if not all of my secondary school teachers studied the subjects they taught to degree level and yet in some cases (English and Physics being the prime examples in my case) they were sucking the life out of subjects that I loved to the extent that I was completely turned off by them come the end of my Leaving Certificate. No doubt because of the mindless pursuit of the leaving certificate examination and the techniques required and the strict adherence to the curriculum. After all, rather than being a system of education that improves and empowers the person, the leaving certificate is the next step on the mindless conveyer belt that is

• Work hard in school.
• Get a good Leaving Certificate.
• Go to college, preferably doing something that will lead to a high paying job.
• Get your degree.
• Get a job.
• Meet a nice guy/girl, settle down.
• Get a mortgage, buy a house.
• Make babies, tell them to work hard in school ...

This indoctrined system of personal development through life also feeds back on itself and doesn't tend to produce interested scholars either since for so many people "go to college" is another item to be ticked off on what it is they feel they have to do in life, whether they've genuinely discovered what it is they're interested in studying or not.

simu

Aye, once you get over 500 points you've proven that you're intelligent so there's no point in using your brain any more, or so many people seem to think these days.

Still, people would still have philosophy books and they might end up reading them in their spare time. Even with bad teachers, surely some ideas must still enter into the students' minds? For example, I had a terrible English teacher but she still managed to expose us to a bit of Plato (there were references to some of his ideas in poems by Yeats that were on the curriculum). It was really interesting for me at the time, though, because here was a whole set of references to some really exotic ideas (the references were to Platos' more mystical stuff).

da_deadman

The main problem I have with the Leaving Cert (and maybe the Irish education system as a whole) is that it is so reliant upon learning and memorising facts and formulae. There is very little opportunity to use creative thinking, where the students can question the topic and come up with their own opinions. This doesn't even really happen in English as the students opinions will often merely be a repition of what their teacher has previously said. I think this is an unhealthy education system. It is important to teach people to rely on their own minds, and to be able to generate their own opinions. Maybe the introduction of a philosophy subject onto the curriculem would be a good step in this direction.
I believe this would have the knock-on effect of improving the level of politics in the country, as people would be able to have their own ideas, and question the politicians better, as opposed to simply following what others have said.

Stabshauptmann

da_deadman wrote:

The main problem I have with the Leaving Cert (and maybe the Irish education system as a whole) is that it is so reliant upon learning and memorising facts and formulae. There is very little opportunity to use creative thinking, where the students can question the topic and come up with their own opinions.

And thats exactly why I must disagree with simu, you dont need to be intelligent to get a perfect score in the leaving, although it would help.
Intelligence is a capacity of thought and reason. You dont need it to learn reals off by heart. You need to be smart which is totally different. To be smart means to be exact or precise.

DadaKopf

This is something that's taken very seriously in the Danish school curriculum. I don't know whether they teach philosophy but children face no exams until they enter second level. A Danish schoolmaster told me about how their system focuses on developing children's critical faculties at a very early age; when they enter second level, they have a natural disposition towards questioning everything critically. I wouldn't want to overstate the effects of this, though, because I don't know a whole lot about the Danish curriculum.

In any case, this is one factor surely related to the country's progressive political culture and capacity for innovation, which has fueled their country for centuries. Ironic that, as regards their philosophical pedigree, their most famous philosopher, Kierkegaard, emerged from a sleepy town populated by mongos.

So as you say, the structure of the competition for college places would have to be radically revised to allow space for the blossoming of student's critical capacities. I'd like to see philosophy taught, but I'd rather see the system change first. This is something a review committee is looking in to right now.

simu

Aye, once you get over 500 points you've proven that you're intelligent so there's no point in using your brain any more, or so many people seem to think these days.

(quoting myself)

Argh, wait a minute! I was saying that many people think this. I, however, do not agree with them!

SkepticOne

ecksor wrote:

• Work hard in school.
• Get a good Leaving Certificate.
• Go to college, preferably doing something that will lead to a high paying job.
• Get your degree.
• Get a job.
• Meet a nice guy/girl, settle down.
• Get a mortgage, buy a house.
• Make babies, tell them to work hard in school ...

This indoctrined system of personal development through life also feeds back on itself and doesn't tend to produce interested scholars either since for so many people "go to college" is another item to be ticked off on what it is they feel they have to do in life, whether they've genuinely discovered what it is they're interested in studying or not.

Yes, but at least people have some time for hobbies (like watching Sky Movies or playing darts). In days gone by the list would have been:

• Work 10 hours a day in fields
• Get married
• Make (surviving) children work 10 hours a day in fields
• Get sick
• Die

The main hope would have been that your children would have been old enough to carry on alone before you die.

People ensuring that they have the means of surviving and, with luck, prospering, reproducing and passing on the means of survival to offspring is pretty universal and not unique to humans. It does not seem to me to be the result of indoctrination.

ecksor

Perhaps indoctrined was the wrong word or carries some unfortunate connotations, but I can't think of a better word right now. I just think that that is the agreed path that parents and secondary school teachers have decided in certain sections of society or for certain sets of students, whether it is the most suitable path for personal development of the student or not.

People are different but there's a strange lack of imagination when it comes to advising school leaving students about their future choices. I'll give an example from my own experience, I don't know how typical it is. When I was being advised on what to do when it was mentioned that it was a pity that I wasn't interested in becoming an actuary. Now, being an actuary was seen as the ideal career route for a strong maths student who could get crazily high points (which I wasn't going to and we all knew that) because it was seen as a way to earn lots of money. I didn't see it as a particularly appealing move (the joke about actuaries is that they did it because they couldn't stand the excitement of accountancy) and made that clear. The career guidance I recieved afterwards was all about how to gain access to actuarial degrees or qualifications that would appeal to insurance companies hiring potential actuaries. It seemed to be the trend that there was a set choice of skilled jobs that they saw us working towards. By comparison, I recently found out that a very bright but lazy student I went to school with who seemed to me to have gone into a degree in engineering half-heartedly dropped out of his masters to become one of the guys who sets the odds for the major Irish bookmakers. When I thought back on our schooldays, I remembered that he was always down at the bookies during his lunchtimes and usually making money. Could you imagine any career guidance teacher recommending 'bookie' as a career choice though?

In your description of days gone by, I'd say it would depend on your background as to what exactly you'd have been doing, so I guess the point you're making is that we have opportunities now that we didn't have previously. I fully agree with that. I just don't think that the best way of maximising that opportunity is necessarily to find out what high-paying job it will eventually lead to and merely see it as a means to that end. For some, maybe, but not everyone.

SkepticOne

ecksor wrote:

In your description of days gone by, I'd say it would depend on your background as to what exactly you'd have been doing, so I guess the point you're making is that we have opportunities now that we didn't have previously. I fully agree with that. I just don't think that the best way of maximising that opportunity is necessarily to find out what high-paying job it will eventually lead to and merely see it as a means to that end. For some, maybe, but not everyone.

Maybe a less authoritarian "one size fits all" approach is what is required. In my school the advice was always "Have you tried the bank?". Everyone knew they would be asked this question in advance.

On the other hand, the career guidence teacher probably saw it as his duty to recommend safe secure employment. He is not going to be blamed by the parents if, after 40 years behind a desk in a bank, their child was not entirely fulfilled by that choice of work, whereas he might be if young Johnny remained unemployed for 5 years having failed to make it as a movie stuntman. So from this point of view, I can understand a certain conservatism in the choice of career advice given.

I suppose what I was getting at with my earlier post was that it is only with the development of the economy and society that advising people to prioritise personal development when choosing a career path becomes appropriate. The more afluence there is, and the more sophisticated the society, the more personal choice can enter in to the equation.

Slight catch-22 situation here, of course. In order for the society to become sophisticated, there must be people to fill the more unusual jobs it creates, otherwise it doesn't develop. As was said by DadaKopf about Denmark, "In any case, this is one factor surely related to the country's progressive political culture and capacity for innovation, which has fueled their country for centuries."