Switzerland has a vibrant philosophical community. Every major University in every major city has a department of Philosophy. Philosophy can be practised, lived and thought of and taught in many different ways. This is especially the case in Swiss educational system with different cantons and languages. One of the roles of high school education is to provide a general overview of different disciplines and different schools of thought and to eventually prepare students for higher, more specialised education in a particular domain. High school students should ideally identify their interest and need to be well informed about the programs offered by the departments where they want to study.
Swiss high schools, Universities and philosophical community make all the information transparent and accessible. In Geneva, the Canton I am most familiar with, the Department and the community offers many ways for high school students to get informed. Students can gather information about the University program from the departmental web site, contact directly members responsible for the program, participate at the Information day (Portes ouvertes) where students and members of the department answer their questions in person and ultimately, during the first part of the semester, they can follow the presentation of the department and participate in the courses.
Furthermore, the association of students of philosophy at the University of Geneva – Phileas, participates at the above-mentioned departmental activities and is very proactive in reaching out to high school students. Although it is not its main activity, Phileas has organised several events for high school students. At the Semi-finals of the Swiss Philosophy Olympics, members of the association and of the department have prepared a short presentation on fallacies (Sophismes) – both a very timely and at the same time ever-present topic. Members of Phileas and PhD students, in cooperation with instructors of the Collège Rousseau organised a presentation of different topics of analytic philosophy in their areas of interest.
Through our interactions with high school students and students starting their Bachelor program, we have noticed that a couple of basic and very useful concepts of analytic philosophy were not understood or introduced. It is normal that analytic philosophy is not the main focus of every student and it is also quite understandable that it is not the only focus of the high school philosophical training. On the other hand, it is a bit surprising that even students entering the Bachelor program in philosophy in Geneva might have some misconceptions about the training ahead that will last for 3 to 5 years of their lives.
Based on these observations, Phileas, with the approbation of the Department, has conducted a survey, asking students of philosophy at the University of Geneva, to indicate their level of preparation for particular courses proposed in the Bachelor program. The results should be taken with a grain of salt and interpreted cautiously – the number of respondents was low, we did not control for correlations between the levels of preparation and tendency to respond. It seems that some students feel unprepared for many of the courses offered in the program, despite having studied at high schools in the same canton (81% of respondets). It is worth noting that the change from high school to University is a major one, no matter the discipline and one can only wonder about the answers students of physics, engineering or mathematics would provide.
The results should not be interpreted as indicative of the quality of the University program, high school program, nor of the level of engagement of high school students. What we can tentatively observe is, for instance, that the level of preparation (as perceived by the respondents), for philosophical discussion and writing and for the program in general, fares much better than their preparation for particular domains – notably logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. A noteworthy fact is that the program at the University of Geneva invites students to take the introduction to logic in their first year. The transition from high schools to University could partially explain the perceived insufficient preparation. Many of similar factors would need to be included in order to provide an interpretation for any strong claims about the programs.
Nevertheless, the results of the questionnaire motivated a small group, members of the Geneva philosophical community, to consider an elaboration of manual or rather a toolkit of analytic philosophy for high schools as a collaboration between members of the department, high school teachers and students and members of Phileas.
The main idea was to provide material in form of topical, self-standing, off-the-shelf modules suitable for presentations during the lessons of philosophy in the high schools, alternatively, accessible to interested high school students for self-study (beyond the highly important principle, that highschoolers practice autonomously – Know thyself!). The results of the survey may be informative for the prioritisation of the work by domain, although the modular approach allow to conduct different tasks in parallel. The project run into a halt because of a lack of resources and time, but some of us still believe that it is worth pursuing.
Philosophie.ch understands the importance of high school philosophical education and dedicates a section of its portal to this topic (https://www.philosophie.ch/mittelschulen). Further relevant resources are the online course on ethics (https://www.philosophie.ch/onlinelernkurs-ethik) and an information page about the Philosophy Olympiad (https://www.philosophie.ch/philosophie-olympiade), at the moment, in German only.
More on this topic to follow soon.
Resources in French
L’Encyclopédie Philosophique (EP) - https://encyclo-philo.fr
Massin, Olivier, Anne Meylan, (illustrated by Baba). 2014. Aristote chez les Helvètes: douze essais de métaphysique helvétique. Paris: Ithaque.
iPhilo – the journal of the association of students of philosophy at the University of Geneva – Phileas
Resources in English
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) - https://plato.stanford.edu
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) - https://iep.utm.edu
Fallacy files - Taxonomy, examples, explanation and logical form of fallacies - https://www.fallacyfiles.org
Guidelines on writing
Orwell, George. 1946. ‘Politics and the English Language’. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language.
Pryor, James. 2012. ‘Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper’. http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html.