by Stefan Schindler
Everyone has a philosophy – a “worldview,” a system of values and beliefs influencing actions – whether they know it or not (through conscious, critical reflection).
Bertrand Russell’s early twentieth-century call for philosophy in schools is mirrored in Alfred North Whitehead’s The Aims of Education. I refer readers to my web-posted essay “The Tao of Teaching: Romance and Process.”
Philosophy in schools (including for children) and in public spaces (Francis Bacon’s “marketplace of ideas”) is much in need of augmentation and enhancement, and this especially true in the USA.
Philosophy can, or should, enhance critical thinking skills and ethical reflection – from early youth through old age. However, what is often missing from the call for philosophy in schools is a necessary conjoining of philosophy with what Michael Parenti calls “real history” (as opposed to the jingoistic mush of social conditioning). To paraphrase Santayana: Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it (as the USA is intent on doing, over and over, at great cost to the nation and the world, including the biosphere).
Democracy and justice depend on informed citizens, and the USA has perhaps the most historically illiterate citizens in the modern world. Hence the disastrous results of America’s political process ever since the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. People cannot think philosophically about – apply critical thinking skills to – what they don’t know. As increasingly evidenced in America, economic apartheid and historical-political ignorance go together. Hence the tragedy of increasing poverty, fear, prejudice, and scapegoating, and the equally tragic ease of political manipulation, in which citizens vote against their own best interest.
Recalling Plato’s parable of the cave, Howard Zinn observed: “The truth is so often the opposite of what we are told that we can no longer turn our heads around far enough to see it.” Hence Noam Chomsky notes: “The problem is not that people don’t know; it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.” To which I add: Individual innocence is no protection against collective responsibility. And thus, to conclude: Insofar as the purpose of life is learning and service, and insofar as Buddha’s political philosophy advocates democratic socialism (what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness”), society should serve schools, not the other way around.