Reader Nathan Howards points me to this. Comments from readers informed about these issues?
And the second paragraph?
9 responses to “A-level philosophy under threat in the UK?”
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I think it's fair to say that A Level Philosophy tends to be regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a bit of a soft option. Here's what e.g. Oxford say: "To give one example: studying English literature ought to involve a development of skills of careful reading of, and critical engagement with, texts, which we value, and it seems to do this to a higher degree than A level philosophy. So there can be an indirect disadvantage; by studying philosophy, there is less time for mathematics, history, languages, and so on, studies which may support an application for one of our degrees involving philosophy better, and may in fact be better indicators of success in studying philosophy at university." So I wouldn't think there would be much if anything in the way of knock-on effects for university philosophy departments, one way or the other.
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While I take Andy's point with respect to Oxford, I'm not sure Oxford is a good example from which to generalise to university philosophy departments in the UK.
On a different note: I got into ex-polytechnic university (read: one that is regarded as not 'proper' by snobs, because originally they were institutions that trained people in vocational skills) with only a couple of A levels at just C grade. Mainly I got a chance as I did the first half of the philosophy A level, got 100%, and loved it – which came through in my application.
There I got a string of good grades (1sts and 2.1s [that is, distinctions and merits]) and went on to a top-ranked grad department where I also got a 2.1 (merit) in my master's.
The small relevant point is that my performance in only half the A level is what let my alma mater take a chance on me.
The large relevant point is this: I had never *ever* considered university, in fact I was dead set against it, until I found philosophy A level. This was by utter chance, having no idea what it was (I didn't even know it was done at university either) and I was just attending a subject talk on it to avoid subject talks on "mathematics, history, languages, and so on".
That twist of fate changed my life, not least in being the only person in my family, for as many generations as I know, to get to grad school, and blah blah blah all the rest of the stuff we all love about doing philosophy.
Having it only at university would have been far too late for people like me as we would never even have gone. What I'd be doing with my life or where I'd be had I not attended that subject talk I don't like to even guess. It wasn't an upward trajectory, let's put it that way.
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Just a quick follow-up on Andy's point above. I think it's obviously true that there's no need at all to have done Philosophy A-level in order to do well in Philosophy at university. I'm not sure it's true that it's a soft option, though.
I think a collapse in Philosophy A-level might well have a significant effect on Philosophy in British universities. This is because, as education in Britain has become increasingly instrumentalist (exam results being always the key thing), and as it becomes more expensive to go to university, there has been, I think, an increasing tendency to avoid risk – both in choosing degree courses, and in choosing modules within a degree course. This means that people have increasingly tended to choose to study at university subjects which they have done, and done well in, at school (this is high school). In that environment, it seems to me that if Philosophy disappears from (high) school, there is likely to be a drop in applications to study Philosophy – particularly single-honours Philosophy – at university.
As Michael B notes above, Oxford is quite untypical of British universities in many ways. One is that (like Cambridge) its intake continues largely to be of people from more privileged backgrounds: not for any want of trying by people at Oxford (or Cambridge) – but because of long-standing perceptions of ancient universities. This more privileged intake seems to me likely to be more prepared to take risks in choices of degree courses, because they are, in general, less at risk in their lives. A second point is that Oxford itself (unlike Cambridge, in fact) does not offer single-honours Philosophy: so someone interested in Philosophy can always hedge their bets by going for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (if they've done social-science or mathematics A-levels), or classics (which can end up being 50% Philosophy)if they've done Latin at School.
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For a statement on this issue from the British Philosophical Association, see here: http://www.bpa.ac.uk/uploads/Future%20of%20Philosophy%20A-level,%20BPA%20Statement.pdf
As you will see, the situation is more complex than some reports have suggested.
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The British Philosophical Association, which was consulted by the examining body, but which is not responsible for the outcome, has now put out a statement:
http://www.bpa.ac.uk/uploads/Future%20of%20Philosophy%20A-level,%20BPA%20Statement.pdf
(If there is any problem with this link, the document can be reached via what is currently the top item on http://www.bpa.ac.uk/news )
Two claims in the statement jumped out at me:
"recognition that the marking schemes needed to be prepared in a manner which gave clear, incontestable indications of right and wrong answers"; and
"Nothing can be more harmful to the intellectual integrity of an A level than its conflicting with how the discipline is taught at university".
The former claim presumably reflects the fact that AQA have not found markers who have the necessary time and talent to appraise scripts independently of rigid marking schemes. But notwithstanding such practicalities, I detect a certain tension between the two claims.
On the more general question of philosophy for 16-18 year olds, two points of comparison are the philosophy element in the French baccalauréat, and philosophy in the International Baccaleaurete. Some information on the latter is available here:
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Richard,
That is a good point but before making a judgement, you ought to look at the proposed marking schemes for sample questions to see how AQA have attempted to resolve the inevitable tension.
The main points are that first, they do not assume there are unique right or wrong answers nor specify them explicitly, and secondly, they have combined short questions requiring statement of positions and arguments, with marks awarded for clarity and accuracy, with longer more discursive essay questions, with marks awarded for clarity, non-redundancy and making logical links amongst other virtues. These are definite improvements over the previous marking scheme. No one is saying the result is ideal, but it is an improvement and thus justifiable as an interim measure.
Tom
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Tom Stoneham (comment number 6 above) is, of course, correct to say that what has actually been done, within the constraints, is relevant. This page gives, at the bottom, links to sample papers and marking schemes. It also gives, near the top on the right hand side, a link to the draft specification:
http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/philosophy/a-level/philosophy-a-draft/past-papers-and-mark-schemes
The new approach may be better than the old, but there is still scope to worry about whether the new approach is what it should be. Are the parties too ready to regard tensions as inevitable, rather than doing something which would be difficult but which would produce a better result? (That is not a rhetorical question. The answer might well be that the parties are not too ready to give up, and the tensions really are inevitable.)
There remains the separate worry that philosophy of religion is given lots of space, and becomes compulsory when that is not justifiable on academic grounds. How many university courses require students to take a course in philosophy of religion? On the other hand, nearly all of them require ethics, epistemology and philosophy of mind, and one can see good reasons for them to do so.
It would be nice to know who thought that giving philosophy of religion such status was a good idea, and why. There is a suspicion abroad – but only a suspicion – that the philosophy of religion option has proved popular, simply because religious education teachers have been running A level philosophy courses, and have pushed students towards that option. (English schools tend to have religious education teachers, because the subject is compulsory in state schools.)
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I studied Philosophy of Religion at A Level and went on to study philosophy at a UK university ranked in the top 4 for the subject. [For American readers, the UK has A Levels but different exam boards give out A Levels. My Philosophy of Religion A Level is from a different exam board from the one in this article.] I can't help but feel there is a degree of hyperbole to this about what is being taught; clearly philosophy of religion doesn't put people from studying philosophy as the majority of my peers studied Philosophy of Religion.
Also, I have studied many topics that within my A Level that have not been offered at my university. For instance, I studied logical positivism/vienna circle/via negativa, I also studied the views of Hume, Kant, Sartre etc. on free will as well as the six main ethical theories and applied ethics. We also did an in depth study of Plato's Republic and Aristotle on the forms as ideas on the Ancient Greek Demiurge.
The hyperbole is that this A Level award is completely useless and teaches nothing about philosophy. I think a useful question is to look at is what the motivation for the philosophy lecturers complaining. From my perspective, the complaint is really that more people studying philosophy of religion = more students not going to take my course because they don't know what it is.
A few years ago there was a similar complaint about the history A Level because it just covered 'sensationalist' topics (i.e. Nazi Germany & Stalin) yet the people making the complaint were the same ones whose books weren't being bought because their field wasn't on the syllabus (i.e. David Starkey).
As for the teaching people to engage with the text, that is a skill that takes many years to develop and is part of what first year should be about. Please be realistic about what you can expect young people to do; some professors are under the impression that students some come to university already possessing the ability to publish professionally.
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I did the A-level 2007–09, and we often felt that what was required in the exam wasn't very philosophical. However, our highly-motivated teacher took the syllabus as an opportunity to expose us to the real classical texts, and we spent our classroom time working our way through these. This was genuinely mind-expanding; there was of course nothing similar in the rest of our school experience. The most important part was our reading of the classics of political philosophy, from Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes and then On Liberty and right through to Rawls.
I know that this is not representative of most A-level Philosophy experiences. But while there might well be very good reasons for overhauling the A-level, the proposed narrowing of the syllabus can't be right because it cuts out the textual component of the course completely. It removes the possibility of doing what we did.
Similar views in this Comment is Free article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/philosophy-a-level-syllabus-religious-education
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