Online Reporter
Simbarashe Bepete, [email protected]
One of the highlights of the French calendar is the first day of the baccalaureate, which begins with the seating of the philosophy exam by all final year high school learners in France. The baccalaureate level exams can be likened to the Matric exams in South Africa.
Direct comparison with our own education system with Ordinary and Advanced level exams is slightly tenuous as some of our students have the option of finishing pre-tertiary schooling at O-level. Suffice to say, the French education model which mandates every student to study philosophy probably provides lessons (pun unintended) for many countries around the world including our own.
I remember listening to the African Jazz pianist Andile Yanana relating how he was surprised at the quality of questions he received from young students during a music seminar he conducted at a school in France.
He noted that their questions had a depth that one would not normally associate with children at that age. Upon making further enquiry he was then told that philosophy was a core subject in France and hence learners have a relatively high aptitude for philosophical enquiry.
In the world of practical objectives and pragmatic constraints, the utility of studying philosophy can easily be dismissed as needless head-in-the-cloud mental gesticulating. It might not serve any immediate material purpose.
However, the habits of thought, that is, the methods of systematic reflection and probing analysis that are the core faculties that are developed from studying philosophy provide the genesis of all significant material progress.
The ability to theorise is the basis of all innovation. Without theory there cannot be invention. Every invention is based on an addendum to an existing theoretical construct and its application to achieve positive material effect.
Time and space will not allow me to elaborate on this point but suffice to say, much of what we consider as cutting-edge technology today has its basis in theoretical constructs that were the product of purely philosophical enterprise.
The very computers that interspace every aspect of modern activity are based on a purely abstract construct called von-Neumann architecture.
Von-Neumann himself was a Hungarian born polymath who never actually built a physical computer but only conceived its theoretical framework through a process of concise reasoning informed by philosophical considerations.
I have some small experience in this regard. Some time in 2011, I was able to file a patent application with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) that in essence challenged the state of the art in heat engine theory and design.
The patent was granted novelty, industrial applicability and inventive step upon examination by the WIPO patents office in Vienna, Austria. We have since been able to prototype and pilot a heat exchanger optimisation technology based on the idea contained in this patent application.
The idea did not emanate from any special technical expertise or experiment. It was purely the result of ab initio theoretical enquiry.
Philosophy is the bedrock of all academic knowledge. Implicit in any subject of study is its underlying philosophy, thus studying philosophy as a standalone subject will empower the learner to have a deeper understanding of any subject.
An analogy that quickly comes to mind is that of music. There are many genres of music but one foundational music theory. There are many academic disciplines but one unifying method of inquiry. Philosophy enables us to study knowledge, knowing and the source thereof.
It allows us to study knowledge and wisdom for its own sake. The very etymology of the word philosophy connotes the love of knowledge. Just as musicians conversant with music theory tend to be more technically proficient than those that are not, students conversant in philosophy tend to have a better if not deeper appreciation of any subject of study.
As another case in point, recently there has been a ground-breaking development in the world of Artificial Intelligence from a Chinese company called DeepSeek.
What enabled the team of young engineers at DeepSeek to develop their R1 large language model (LLM) using limited computing resources is that they were able to approach their work using a different philosophical paradigm from the one used by more established AI companies.
Teaching our learners philosophy will capacitate them to better interact with knowledge. That is, their minds will become better nurtured to optimally assimilate knowledge with the effect of moulding more resourceful citizens.
The actual content and scope of the proposed philosophy syllabus will be left to our educators and will naturally be heritage based as informed by Government policy.
