13.8.15

This BBC website article – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33464258 – suggests that teaching philosophy in primary schools improves test results. Good. I’m sure this research is right. Get young people thinking for themselves early, not straitjacketed into formulaic ways of thinking. Help them realise there aren’t always easy answers, sometimes ‘I don’t know’ is ok, and other people can have opinions different to yours. Make them realise they don’t have to accept what they’re told and should feel free to question anything.

Leave it too late and people become part of their family and society’s model and lose the ability to disagree, to challenge. Every child must know that there are more ways of seeing the world than the ways that they’re presented with as a fait accompli. Now, more than ever, this is critical.

And if it boosts test results too, then great. But really, it’s about creating better human beings and better societies.