Oyvind
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Subject: Extraordinary research project completed
Today we ended a quite special philosophy project with two 10th grade classes (16 year olds) at Veienmarka comprehensive school located at the outskirts of Hønefoss, a small town 60 kilometres west of Oslo. This project (one session a week from August till mid December) was remarkable in many ways, of which the most important probably are: 1) This autumn philosophy sessions entirely substituted the Religion subject for these two classes; i.e. the pupils had no education in Religion this semester but did philosophy instead. 2) We were supposed to evaluate quantitatively each pupil based on his or hers individual performances in the philosophy groups during the autumn. To this purpose we also arranged several written assignments as well as a concluding oral (group) test. This means that the pupil's level of activity and the "quality" of their contributions in the philosophy sessions determined their Religion marks for this semester (whether they got an A or a D).
Neither the systematic substitution of the Religion subject with philosophical dialogues nor the quantitative evaluation of the pupil's general thinking skills have been done before in this country, so this was indeed a pioneering project. In the coming months we will write a research report based on the project. This will be forwarded to the Norwegian Ministry of Education where it will hopefully be taken into consideration in regards to the ongoing discussion whether or not philosophy shall be launched as a separate subject in the Norwegian grade school.
If there are interested English-speaking readers out there, please contact us, and we will try to convey some more details from this very exciting project.
Neither the systematic substitution of the Religion subject with philosophical dialogues nor the quantitative evaluation of the pupil's general thinking skills have been done before in this country, so this was indeed a pioneering project. In the coming months we will write a research report based on the project. This will be forwarded to the Norwegian Ministry of Education where it will hopefully be taken into consideration in regards to the ongoing discussion whether or not philosophy shall be launched as a separate subject in the Norwegian grade school.
If there are interested English-speaking readers out there, please contact us, and we will try to convey some more details from this very exciting project.
Retention of strangeness is the only antidote to estrangement. T. W. Adorno