Philosophy at Columbia Secondary School

 

CSS offers a unique, one in the nation curriculum that includes philosophy as a required course throughout middle and high school. Why add philosophy to an already full curriculum? The major purpose is to help students learn to think deeply, individually and with one another, about important issues -- both issues of pressing contemporary importance and the enduring philosophical issues that often underlie them. Developing a philosophical way of thinking – a disposition to ask why and to examine issues deeply and from multiple perspectives -- will serve students well, in all of their academic course work and in their lives outside of and beyond school.

 
Philosophy also has an essential place in a curriculum that emphasizes science. Science is more than an accumulation of facts. It is a way of knowing, to be examined and compared with other ways of knowing. Understanding the scientific method, and examining the relation of science to human values and to society, are topics that benefit from a philosophical perspective and mode of inquiry.
 
 

The Middle School Philosophy Program

 

While philosophy is quite commonly taught to middle and high school students in other countries, it is still rarely found in middle and high schools in the USA. That is a shame, for philosophy makes a significant contribution to writing and critical thinking skills, and it intersects in many places with other parts of the core curriculum. What is more, students are very good at doing philosophy (much to the surprise of some adults). Think how many times children ask “Why?”, that most basic of philosophical questions. While “philosophy” literally means “love of wisdom”, it is perhaps better characterized as an attempt to answer those questions that science by itself cannot answer, that can only be answered by thinking about them. To take just two examples, science by itself will not tell us whether lying is always wrong, or what was going on “before” the big bang. For that, philosophical dialogue is required (and indeed, some philosophers argue that the second question doesn’t even make sense). 
Our instructional approach in the CSS Middle School Philosophy Program follows no lesser a figure than Socrates, who believed that genuine philosophizing entails dialog. One doesn’t truly have a position on a matter until he or she has argued about it with others. The middle-school curriculum emphasizes the development of argumentation skills, by first engaging students in their own philosophizing. In tackling them, they learn that many issues are not as simple as they first appear, and they come to appreciate the many different perspectives that need to be brought to bear on a problem. Later, in the high-school curriculum, they will connect these ideas to those of the great philosophers and study their views more formally. A number of difficult topics are addressed early on, for example, animal rights in grade 6 and organ sales and abortion in grade 7, and then revisited at a more advanced level in the high-school curriculum.
 
The middle-school philosophy curriculum differs from much of students’ other middle-school coursework in that it is heavily skill oriented, rather than content oriented. We draw for students the parallel between the development of argumentation skills and the development of athletic skills. Consistent, dedicated practice leads to improvement that is not easy to detect on a week-by-week basis. The new K-12 Common Standards being adopted across the nation require that students become proficient in “…logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence.”   These critical skills are exercised in all of students’ middle-school coursework. In philosophy we concentrate our attention most directly on them.
 
The High School Philosophy Program (PCIC)
 
The High School Philosophy program at CSS (Pre-College Instruction in Philosophy, or PCIC) builds on the foundations laid in middle school. PCIC courses tend to have a narrower focus, which allows students to explore philosophical topics in more depth. Among the current offerings for eighth and ninth grade students are courses in Bioethics and Environmental Ethics, as well as Philosophy of Science. Courses planned for the future include: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Symbolic Logic, Political Philosophy, Epistemology & Metaphysics, and Global Philosophy.
 
One of the fundamental goals of PCIC is to integrate philosophical exploration with other core curriculum areas. For example, the Bioethics and Environmental Ethics courses will allow students to explore ethical questions that are raised by scientific and technological phenomena they are learning about in Science, Earth Science, Engineering, Genetics, Behavior, Neuroscience, Environmental Science, Climate Change, Current Events, and The Living Environment. In Philosophy of Science students take a closer look at the scientific method, the growth of scientific knowledge throughout history, and the nature of scientific institutions. History of philosophy as well as moral and political philosophy will provide an important backdrop to many of the issues being discussed in Social Studies and ELA courses.
 
Another goal of the PCIC curriculum is to prepare students for college-level study in the humanities. To this end, students will learn to read and critically engage with primary sources in philosophy; there will also be frequent opportunities to attend lectures given by the philosophy faculty and by guest speakers from the CSS community and beyond.