How tractable is improving (moral) philosophy education in high schools?
tldr: Do high school still neglect ethics / moral philosophy in their curriculums? Mine did (year 2012). Are there tractable ways to improve the situation, through national/state education policy or reaching out to schools and teachers? Has this been researched / tried before?
The public high school I went to in Rottweil (rural Southern Germany) was overall pretty good, probably top 2-10% globally, except for one thing: Moral philosophy. 90min/week “Christian Religion” was the default for everyone, in which we spent most of the time interpreting stories from the bible, most of which to me felt pretty irrelevant to the present. This was in 2012 in Germany, a country with more atheists than Christians as of 2023, and even in 2012 my best guess is that <20% of my classmates were practicing a religion.
Only in grade 10, we got the option to switch to secular Ethics classes instead, which only <10% of the students did (Religion was considered less work).
Ethics class quickly became one of my favorite classes. For the first time in my life I had a regular group of people equally interested in discussing Vegetarianism and other such questions (almost everyone in my school ate meat, and vegetarians were sometimes made fun of). Still, the curriculum wasn’t great, we spent too much time with ancient Greek philosophers and very little time discussing moral philosophy topics relevant to the present.
How have your experiences been in high school? I’m especially curious about more recent experiences.
Are there tractable ways to improve the situation? Has anyone researched this?
1) Could we get ethics classes in the mandatory/default curriculum in more schools? Which countries or states seem best for that? In Germany, education is state-regulated—which German state might be most open to this? Hamburg? Berlin?
2) Is there a shortage in ethics teachers (compared to religion teachers)? Can we get teachers more interested in teaching ethics?
3) Are any teachers here teaching ethics? Would you like to connect more with other (EA/ethics) teachers? We could open a whatsapp group, if there’s not already one.
I went to high school in the USA, in the 2000s, so it has been roughly twenty years. I attended a public highschool, that wasn’t particularly well-funded nor impoverished. There were no ethics or philosophy courses offered. There was not education on moral philosophy, aside from that which is gained through literature in an English class (such as reading Lord of the Flies or Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mockingbird).
There is a Facebook group for EA Education, but my impression is that it isn’t very active.
My (uninformed, naïve) guess is that this isn’t very tractable, because education tends to be controlled by the government and there are a lot of vested interests. The argument would basically be “why should we teach these kids about being a good person when we could instead use that time to teach them computer programming/math/engineering/language/civics?” It is a crowded space with a lot of competing interests already.
Charter schools are a real option in many places. In Chicago if you have money and wherewithal you can open a charter school and basically teach what ever you want. The downside here is you will not be able to get the top students in the city to go to your school because there are already a select few incredible public and private schools.
In England, secular ethics isn’t really taught until Year 9 (age 13-14) or Year 10, as part of Religious Studies classes. Even then, it might be dependent on the local council, the type of school or even the exam boards/modules that are selected by the school. And by Year 10, students in some schools can opt out of taking religious studies for their GCSEs.
Anecdotally, I got into EA (at least earlier than I would have) because my high school religious studies teacher (c. 2014) could see that I had utilitarian intuitions (e.g. in discussions about animal experimentation and assisted dying) and gave me a copy of Practical Ethics to read. I then read The Life You Can Save.
How tractable is improving (moral) philosophy education in high schools?
tldr: Do high school still neglect ethics / moral philosophy in their curriculums? Mine did (year 2012). Are there tractable ways to improve the situation, through national/state education policy or reaching out to schools and teachers? Has this been researched / tried before?
The public high school I went to in Rottweil (rural Southern Germany) was overall pretty good, probably top 2-10% globally, except for one thing: Moral philosophy. 90min/week “Christian Religion” was the default for everyone, in which we spent most of the time interpreting stories from the bible, most of which to me felt pretty irrelevant to the present. This was in 2012 in Germany, a country with more atheists than Christians as of 2023, and even in 2012 my best guess is that <20% of my classmates were practicing a religion.
Only in grade 10, we got the option to switch to secular Ethics classes instead, which only <10% of the students did (Religion was considered less work).
Ethics class quickly became one of my favorite classes. For the first time in my life I had a regular group of people equally interested in discussing Vegetarianism and other such questions (almost everyone in my school ate meat, and vegetarians were sometimes made fun of). Still, the curriculum wasn’t great, we spent too much time with ancient Greek philosophers and very little time discussing moral philosophy topics relevant to the present.
How have your experiences been in high school? I’m especially curious about more recent experiences.
Are there tractable ways to improve the situation? Has anyone researched this?
1) Could we get ethics classes in the mandatory/default curriculum in more schools? Which countries or states seem best for that? In Germany, education is state-regulated—which German state might be most open to this? Hamburg? Berlin?
2) Is there a shortage in ethics teachers (compared to religion teachers)? Can we get teachers more interested in teaching ethics?
3) Are any teachers here teaching ethics? Would you like to connect more with other (EA/ethics) teachers? We could open a whatsapp group, if there’s not already one.
I went to high school in the USA, in the 2000s, so it has been roughly twenty years. I attended a public highschool, that wasn’t particularly well-funded nor impoverished. There were no ethics or philosophy courses offered. There was not education on moral philosophy, aside from that which is gained through literature in an English class (such as reading Lord of the Flies or Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mockingbird).
There is a Facebook group for EA Education, but my impression is that it isn’t very active.
My (uninformed, naïve) guess is that this isn’t very tractable, because education tends to be controlled by the government and there are a lot of vested interests. The argument would basically be “why should we teach these kids about being a good person when we could instead use that time to teach them computer programming/math/engineering/language/civics?” It is a crowded space with a lot of competing interests already.
Charter schools are a real option in many places. In Chicago if you have money and wherewithal you can open a charter school and basically teach what ever you want. The downside here is you will not be able to get the top students in the city to go to your school because there are already a select few incredible public and private schools.
In England, secular ethics isn’t really taught until Year 9 (age 13-14) or Year 10, as part of Religious Studies classes. Even then, it might be dependent on the local council, the type of school or even the exam boards/modules that are selected by the school. And by Year 10, students in some schools can opt out of taking religious studies for their GCSEs.
Anecdotally, I got into EA (at least earlier than I would have) because my high school religious studies teacher (c. 2014) could see that I had utilitarian intuitions (e.g. in discussions about animal experimentation and assisted dying) and gave me a copy of Practical Ethics to read. I then read The Life You Can Save.