“Comment on Philosophy in Schools? by Pak Abu” plus 1 more

Comment on Philosophy in Schools? by Pak Abu

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 11:23 PM PST

March 4, 2011

Philosophy in Schools?

With the campaigns in Merlimau (Melaka) and Kerdau (Pahang) hotting up, we are being treated to the spectacle of Ummi Halfida's tales of sex, money and scandals and the trial within a trial antics by the prosecution and defence teams in our courts, where Anwar Ibrahim's character and integrity are being challenged and his political future is under threat.

Both accounts are hitting the headlines in the mainstream and alternative media. I suppose, it is a natural development in Malaysia's no hold barred politics, and election contestations. Malaysiakini and The Malaysian Insider , among others, are carrying these stories. Furthermore sex for sure sells.

I am not going to buck the trend today. In stead, I want to switch your attention to a topic that on the surface seems mundane and irrelevant to some. For me, it is a moot point because it concerns the education of the future generations of Malaysians who will be taking over the leadership of our country, looking ahead two decades or so (beyond 2020, maybe 2030).

We needs leaders and followers who are flexible, adaptable and well equipped to meet and handle a constant stream of new ideas, techniques, technologies, complexities and problems. For that to happen, we need educational reform and we need it badly if we are not to be left by the competition in our region.

I feature Philosopher A.C. Grayling again as he deals with the question: "Should school children be taught philosophy?". He provides an interesting point of view. I think the teaching of philosophy (both Eastern and Western Philosophies) should be allowed in Malaysian schools. After all, Muslim students are already taught Islam, the Quran and Hadith, although we may justifiably disagree with its pedagogy. Why not philosophy then so that Malaysians can comfortably dabble with ideas and thoughts of philosophers of antiquity and the modern era.–Din Merican

Philosophy in Education*

Philosopher A.C. Grayling asks:

Should School Children be taught Philosophy?

Dictionaries correctly, inspiringly, but unhelpfully define 'philosophy' as 'love of wisdom', but a better definition would be 'reflective and critical enquiry'. Philosophy is of course a subject as well as a process, though a very comprehensive one: its two great questions can be said to be: What is there? and What matters in what there is, which jointly and immediately invite the central range of more specific questions about knowledge, truth, reason, value, the mind, and more which constitute the core of the enterprise.

Efforts to gain understanding in these matters require the kind of thought that is distinctively philosophical: questioning, probing, critical, reflective, exacting, restless, accepting that there might be several answers or none, and therefore accepting the open texture of enquiry where there is a rarely a simple solution to a problem, and hardly ever closure. Minds experienced in this kind of thinking are generally resistant to quick fixes of ideology and dogma, and are healthily prone to examine, with a clear and when necessary sceptical eye, everything put before them.

Enquiry if this kind is obviously a highly exportable process; practice in it constitutes what is now called a 'transferable skill'. For this reason alone philosophy ought to be a central and continuous feature of the school curriculum from an early age, because it immediately potentiates students' work in other subject areas.

There is a view that education should as much, if not more, about teaching children how to get and evaluate information as it is about imparting pre-disgusted information to them–at least, after they have the literacy, numeracy and framework knowledge that provides the necessary basis on which a training in thinking and research can build. Philosophy is par excellence what offers the evaluatory part of this desideratum.

And because philosophy us not only about critical reflection and the construction of good arguments, but also about substantive questions–in morality, in epistemology, in logic, and judicially in relation to the claims, assumptions and methodologies of all other more specific areas of enquiry in the natural and social sciences and humanities–the training in the thinking brings with it a rich furnishing of insights and understanding in many fields besides.

In a curriculum devoted to acquiring knowledge and technique, there has to be time for reflection on what it all means, what it is for and why it matters, for almost any of 'it'; and this too is distinctively the province of philosophy.

I have talked about philosophy at primary schools and sixth forms both, and found exactly what one would antecedently expect: that young minds are naturally philosophical minds. Inviting a class of primary-school children to discuss how they can claim to know that there is really a table here before them–that hoary old example–is an exhilarating and instructive enterprise. The question seems to them, as indeed it is, a good one; and they are quick to appreciate the force of sceptical defeaters to the standard evidence adduced in favour of the claim, and the countervailing force of the standard evidence itself.

This openness and readiness to engage with ideas that adult minds might resist on the grounds of obvious silliness(which often means: unobvious importance) is a fertile thing. In view of this, and of the instant exportability of the methods and insights of philosophy to almosy everything else in the curriculum, the case for placing it at the curriculum's heart makes itself.

Students of philosophy gain a possession that enriches them as individuals and social beings for the rest of their lives. As Aristotle said, 'we educate ourselves so that we can make noble our leisure'. But they gain even more than that, for there us the harsh reality of economics and the world of work to be considered, and here too a philosophical education proves its worth.

Our age is one in which people have to be flexible, adaptable and well equipped to meet and handle a constant stream of new ideas, techniques, technologies, complexities and problems. Contemporary economies may still have a use of people trained in a single practical skill, but this is rarer than it was and it is not the way of the future. A training in critical and reflective thought, a training in handling ideas is of the essence in this new and demanding environment.

Philosophy thus provides both for individual development and enrichment, and a bright set of apt intellectual tools for meeting the world's challenges.

*Source: A.C. Grayling, Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (New York: Walker & Co, 2010), paperback, pp 245-248.

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2011 Fulbright scholars dedicated to improving the world

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 03:09 PM PST

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Three University of Sydney graduates have been recognised for their work in moral philosophy, international diplomacy, and women's and children's welfare with 2011 Fulbright Scholarships.

Philosophy

Friday, March 4, 2011