§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hill.]
§ 7 pm
§ Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead)I am grateful to the House for giving me the opportunity of raising in this forum the subject—perhaps the plight—of philosophy. I told some hon. Members the subject of the debate, and some of them exhibited a certain pleasure, whereas others demonstrated some perplexity. Those who viewed the subject askance expressed two rather negative views about the subject of philosophy and its role in education.
The first view was that philosophy is a trivial subject that is not worth bothering with. The second view was rather different—that philosophy is the most profound and complex subject in the universe, but that its atmosphere is so rarefied that only geniuses, such as Einstein, need bother with it. Some people hold those views at the same time—although they are contradictory, as something cannot be both trivial and profound. Either view can be used to support the idea that the subject should be marginal to the educational process.
How do people arrive at such strange views? On the trivial side of the argument, it might be said that most people have thoughts that are broadly philosophical in character—so why bother studying them? Children, for example, often ask questions that are broadly—but fundamentally—philosophical, such as: "How can I tell what is right and what is wrong? Why should I obey the law? What is the point of studying history? Are people naturally selfish? Is everything made up of something else?"; or even, "Does God cry?" Those are among the thousands of philosophical questions that children and teenagers ask.
Our education system should make provision not only for those questions to be answered, but for children and young people to learn that such questioning is of value and should be encouraged. Part of the value of such questioning is that, in our lives, whether adult or child, we have to find answers to at least some of those questions.
Education should assist that process. However, it does little to develop young people's capacity to take philosophical matters seriously. Moreover, much of the time, education treats such inquiries as not worthy of pursuit—as if to say, "Ha! That is a philosophical question", with the shrug of the shoulders. It is the Pontius Pilate system:
What is truth?…and would not stay for an answer.It is a mistake to trivialise philosophy for many reasons, but I shall list only three. First, its subject matter is fundamentally important. Whatever else we want the education system to do, we want our children to grow up with a strong sense of right and wrong, and the strength of character both to live by their judgment and to develop as moral beings. It seems strange to expect to accomplish that goal by ignoring the subject that has most to offer in moral education.Secondly, by refusing to take seriously young people's philosophical questions, we neglect a very valuable educational tool. Young people have some provisional answers to some of their philosophical questions. 536 However, if they could be brought to realise that their answers were, for example, inconsistent or insufficiently argued, their grasp of matters of the first importance could be developed.
Much practical education provided to people starts not with an inquirer and a provisional answer, but with some authority who "knows" an answer and whose only interest in the process is in getting the other person to absorb it. That is the so-called "blotting paper" theory of education.
Philosophy has the power to deal with the questions about which young people—but not only young people—are really thinking. It treats their confusion not as something to be instantly eliminated, but with respect. People grow from a confused state. Indeed, Aristotle said that the sense of wonder is the source of all knowledge. The teacher of philosophy—who does not have the answers to those fundament questions, but perhaps has more adequate answers—is more like a facilitator of the pupil's thought process than the purveyor of truths. He is, in effect, a Socratic midwife to the pupil's process of learning.
There is some evidence that if one takes seriously the way in which young people think, some of those who are alienated from the education system because it does not address where they are at or what they are thinking might be more willing to stick around.
Thirdly, philosophy opposes what might be called the Gradgrind theory of education—that it is about "facts, facts, facts". Not all questions that human beings address have the character of a question in a pub quiz. Questions that have philosophical complexity are worth asking and addressing even though no single human being has a final answer to them. The answers that one generates to such questions are partial, provisional and hesitant and as a result they are often derided, but they have an interesting feature: other people may have a perspective that, once encountered, might make one's hesitant, provisional answer a great deal better. That makes a conversation with those who have other perspectives purposive. When we address philosophical questions, we recognise that our answers could well have been improved if only we had engaged in more conversations with people with different perspectives. A philosophical education can teach us intellectual humility and that the best available answer to a question is not necessarily a final answer. It can also produce equality and co-operation between the teacher as Socratic midwife and the pupil as inquirer, which Gradgrind would never have countenanced.
I have dealt at some length with what should be said in response to the claim that philosophy is trivial. I shall deal more summarily with the idea that it is not relevant to those of us who are more limited in our understanding because it requires the brain of Einstein to cope with it. Of course, every subject has pinnacles that are inaccessible to the beginner and in the case of philosophy one would not expect school students to tackle the "Critique of Pure Reason". However, philosophy can be taught at school level and I suggest that strong benefits could be obtained if the subject were less marginalised.
Antipathy to philosophy is strongly embedded in English culture as opposed to the culture of the Celtic fringe. I once worked in a bar where one of the regular customers found out that I was a student of philosophy. "Finking," he said, "is the curse of our age". Although I do not share that judgment, I recognise it as an unargued but potentially philosophical thesis.
537 Previous Governments have put into practice their view that thinking is to be discouraged. In 1983, the then Secretary of State for Education decided that those with a degree in philosophy would not be eligible to teach. I think that he subscribed to the Einstein view of philosophy rather than to the view that it was trivial. Although over the years the ferocity of that judgment has been attenuated, the immediate effect of that decision was that seven university departments of philosophy closed and most teachers in schools today have taken no course in philosophy, not even in the theory of education.
I hope that we can start to repair the damage that that decision caused. I have a personal axe to grind as my own interest in philosophy was sparked by two mathematics teachers, both of whom had degrees in philosophy and taught mathematics with considerable flair and a profound understanding. Because of the previous Government's hostility to philosophy, today's students have no Mr. Donovan or Mr. Coffey to show them why certain mathematical ideas are important. I should like the Government to make a commitment to re-establishing the older, wiser view that an education in philosophy is not something from which the young need to be shielded.
Damaging consequences result from the neglect of philosophy in our schools, a neglect that other cultures would find strange. I have time to mention only one problem—the difficulties that young people have with moral concepts. My short disquisition must therefore represent the many other arguments that I could marshal to show the intrinsic importance of philosophical debate.
Most children grow up trained in a moral system—as a father, I undertake such training myself—in which the first commandment is, "Thou shalt obey". Early in our lives, therefore, there are persons who are the accusatives of that obedientiary ethic—the people whom children obey, such as parents and teachers. In adolescence, an obedientiary ethic proves ineffective, and those whom the child had obeyed are increasingly—perhaps sadly—seen as fallible and limited.
How does our education system facilitate the transition from an obedientiary ethic to a set of moral beliefs founded on a more wide-ranging or synoptic basis? Our schools make little effort to address the problem. Some believers in religion maintain that only an obedientiary ethic can work, saying that God should replace parents as the accusative of the obedientiary prescription. However, even many religious thinkers feel that that argument is not compelling. In our society, a considerable number of young people do not have the belief in a God that could support an obedientiary ethic for adult life.
Young people are left in a moral void, even though all of us agree that what we most want from an education system is that graduates should have high moral standing. The result is confusion, with young people thinking of morality as a maze—I wanted to get in an aside about a well-known radio programme—as a matter of taste, as vacuous or as a mechanism by which the bourgeoisie suppress the proletariat. But those positions are held without any kind of critical analysis, an analysis that could happen only if teachers and pupils were equipped to handle it.
I was a university teacher of philosophy before I entered the House. In my experience, most students arrive holding a strong view that moral beliefs are subjective, simply a matter of taste. They hold the view that any 538 argument about such a topic would lead nowhere and would be a waste of time. The relatively few who did not subscribe to that belief held instead to a relatively primitive obedientiary ethic derived from childhood religion.
Morality has something to do with an obligation to respect others, but our education system is producing people who can provide no reason why others should be treated with respect. Virtually no attention has been given to the nature of morality. On the most important subject of all, our education system is silent. The miracle of our system is not that many people go off the rails, but that those who can give no good reason for behaving in a way that respects the rights of others nevertheless frequently do so.
The tendency of our system to produce ethical subjectivists is regrettable. Those who have studied philosophy usually reject ethical subjectivism as an incoherent position, partly because it offers little scope for distinguishing between what is in the realm of the ethical and moral, and what lies outside it. Would a taste be ethical, if, like Humpty Dumpty, my view of the moral realm was what I said it was?
To counteract subjectivism, those with no interest in philosophy often demand a reintroduction of ethics to the curriculum. However, these demands often amount—particularly from the Conservative party—to a demand to reintroduce an obedientiary ethic. They are often made by those who are "in charge" who ask those who are not "in charge" to conform to their imposed standards of behaviour. However, those "in charge" are sometimes wrong, and young people can cite examples to demonstrate the fact. The efforts to impose an obedientiary ethic are unlikely to succeed—unless, of course, we cease to be a democracy. The difficulty in replacing an emphasis on ethics by an emphasis on citizenship is that those who are good as citizens might be bad as people if the laws that they obey are inhumane—the example of apartheid can be mentioned in that vein.
In the meantime, we should be equipping young people to think seriously about moral matters. One feature of a moral person is that he or she has actually spent some time thinking about these things. "What will the repercussions on others be of my behaviour if I do this?" However, our education system does not provide the facilities for that extended process of reasoning or for that thought process.
I have submitted, using inadequately a single example of ethics, that the subject matter of philosophy is intrinsically important. I have submitted also that the teaching methods it engenders are beneficial: that in teaching it, we are required to respect the deeply held views of pupils and students; that it provides pupils and students with scope for developing independent thought; and that in addressing its questions, we become aware of what I can only call the majesty of the human intellect.
I ask the Government to signal clearly that they do not subscribe to the damaging view of philosophy held by the previous Government, who did not value the contribution that philosophy might make to our system of education and our system of teacher training. I ask the Government to confirm that they value that contribution, and that they will involve philosophers in the development of the curriculum in the areas of thinking skills and citizenship 539 and when they are reflecting on how best to equip school teachers to respond to the welcome, if searching, philosophical questions raised by their pupils.
Descartes once said that philosophy was, in part, like having a conversation with the greatest thinkers of the past. We would be reluctant to shut away the greatest of paintings in a vault somewhere so that they could be viewed no longer. However, the works of the great philosophy masters—which have a transcendent beauty in their own right—are effectively shut in the vaults, for the skills needed to appreciate those works are being suppressed.
By marginalising the subject in our education system, we undermine the capacity of our young people to have that conversation with the great intellects of the past and to appreciate the beauty of their works. In doing so, we deprive them of the potential to appreciate some of the greatest intellectual achievements of humankind.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Charles Clarke)I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) on securing this debate, and on the powerful, effective and entertaining case that he has just made.
I declare my interest in the subject. My mother's degree was in philosophy—she was tutored by Wittgenstein at university. She has been a constant pressure on me to raise the value and worth of philosophy in our education system—not only now, but for a long time. When I was involved in educational policy some 15 years ago, I remember her sending me newspaper cuttings detailing how philosophy had been brought into classes in primary schools in the Bronx in New York—precisely the kind of alienated area that my hon. Friend mentioned—because it developed the skills of thinking and articulacy which could counter the alienation that otherwise existed.
I am not quite sure whether I was the product of a Socratic midwife. However, I assure my hon Friend that I am wholly committed to the general approach that he set out so clearly today.
The Government attach great importance to teaching pupils to think flexibly and to make reasoned judgments. We consider those skills to be a vital part of young people's education and preparation for life, and for lifelong learning. To emphasise the quality of thinking skills is a critical means of raising standards in schools; it is a key element in our overall drive to raise educational standards.
I agree with what my hon. Friend said about the contribution that philosophy can make in developing pupils' thinking processes and skills. Those philosophical skills are already covered by a wide range of subjects throughout the curriculum. We develop children's thinking by making it more explicit; for example, by encouraging pupils to hypothesise, to experiment, to discuss and to reflect—all of which are key thinking skills. Modern information and communication technology frightens some people because of the obedience issues raised by my hon. Friend. However, it can be shown to provoke precisely the kind of thinking skills that must be a key part of our overall curriculum and of the educational process.
540 Several of our current policies aim to develop further the teaching of thinking skills—in many cases, in ways that will offer access to philosophical inquiry. We have specifically asked the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to consider ways of integrating thinking skills into the revised national curriculum—especially at key stage 3—as part of the current review. The literacy and numeracy frameworks both include references to thinking processes, such as investigation and problem solving. This afternoon, I visited the "Tomorrow's World" exhibition at Earls Court, where I saw some exciting maths work that showed games of problem solving as a means of exciting children's interest in those important matters.
Moreover, our recent proposals for a framework for personal, social and health education and for education for citizenship, which are currently out for consultation, will encourage the development of the skills of inquiry, reflection and debate. Citizenship is not about the obedient citizen, as my hon. Friend might fear; it is about the active citizen, who is enabled to participate in, control and determine—in all the ways that we know—a fantastically rapidly changing society. Through that process, children will have opportunities to engage with some of the important moral, social and political issues of today's society—perhaps even with the eternal issues mentioned by my hon. Friend—and to practise the skills of citizenship through discussion and debate, and through active involvement in the life of their schools and communities.
"Articulacy"—a word that perhaps does not exist in the "Oxford English Dictionary"—is an exceptionally important part of our education. It is important to ensure that children are able to articulate their thoughts in a number of ways and, in so doing, to respect the articulate views of others. That is how we have to operate in our society; citizenship will play an important role in doing that. As an aside, I pay tribute to the work done by so many schools in developing school councils, which are an important part in the life of many schools. They fulfil precisely the kind of role recommended by my hon. Friend. I very much support the campaigns by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and other organisations to promote the activity of school councils.
The Government are currently considering the development of a strategy on the way ahead for thinking skills across existing and new policies. In October 1998, the Department for Education and Employment commissioned Carol McGuinness of the school of psychology at Queen's university, Belfast, to review the effectiveness of different approaches to the teaching of thinking skills in primary and secondary schools. The research report—a copy of which I have here—was published on 4 May this year, and my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards attended the launch. A copy of the report has been placed in the Library for the convenience of Members and others.
The report is entitled "From thinking skills to thinking classrooms: a review and evaluation of approaches for developing pupils' thinking". It contains a great deal of interesting material. It reviews examples of structured thinking skills: some focus on a philosophical approach, such as Martin Lipman's "Philosophy for Children"; and others take subject-specific approaches, such as the "cognitive acceleration through science" education programme, which takes thinking skills forward in a 541 science context but aims to accelerate thinking more generally and to infuse thinking skills throughout the curriculum.
It is the latter approach that the Government look to the QCA to take forward, but many schools already use that approach successfully as part of the curriculum. I am attracted to the idea of developing thinking classrooms in which philosophical approaches to learning play a part. We are considering how best to take that forward in the light of the report's detailed findings. My hon. Friend's success in securing today's debate and his powerful expression of these important issues will accelerate and help that process.
I am fortunate in having in my constituency, a few metres from my home, Tuckswood first school, which actively uses philosophy and thinking skills in the classroom, with five and six-year-olds. The head of the school, Sue Eagle, has been a pioneer in the field and has participated in many of our national discussions on the subject. The purpose of thinking skills is to help children to learn how to think for themselves, ask questions and develop their ability to listen, analyse and discuss. Those skills improve pupils' powers of reasoning and inquiry, which are relevant at all key stages of maths, science and other subjects. I welcome the school's initiative in introducing the scheme, which is representative of smaller scale teaching experiments that show that mathematical problem solving and scientific reasoning can be enhanced through cognitive learning.
A couple of months ago, I went to observe philosophy lessons in the school, so that I could see for myself how the subject could be taught to children so young. The experience reflected the points raised by my hon. Friend in his speech tonight. Discussions about what the children liked or did not like brought out a range of important and interesting perceptions. Another philosophy class looked at and discussed fossils, which led to creation issues and 542 the other problematic philosophical issues inherent in that area of inquiry. At that age, children are perfectly able to question and think about such issues, and it is important that they do so.
I can give my hon. Friend the assurances that he seeks. The Government regard thinking as a key part of the national curriculum, and philosophy is critical in that respect. At A-level, philosophy is available as a separate subject and, of more than 1,500 A-level philosophy candidates last year, three quarters passed. Under the Government's A-level reforms, which are to be introduced from next September, philosophy will continue to be available as a separate subject both at full A-level and as one of the new AS-level qualifications. In addition, the QCA is considering proposals for a new AS-level in critical thinking. That is in response to a specific recommendation by Sir Ron, now Lord Dearing in his 1996 report on 16 to 19 qualifications, for a new qualification designed to develop critical understanding of the various forms of knowledge.
The main thrust of the Government's A-level reforms is to encourage young people to take a wider range of subjects than the traditional two or three A-level package. We hope that, in that way, more young people will have the opportunity to include an AS-level in philosophy or critical thinking alongside their main programme of study. I hope that I have been able to reassure my hon. Friend that I and the Government as a whole are strongly committed to the contribution that philosophy and thinking can make to our education system, and that we do not accept the ideology of past Governments. We hope to develop the subject further in the curriculum of the future. I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the chance to make these statements in today's debate.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Seven o'clock.