The result is that for many, Filosofia 11 becomes a . You either learn to speak the language of the bourgeoisie (rational, detached, argumentative) or you are marked as “not philosophical.” This reproduces the very hierarchies that philosophy, in its best moments, claims to dismantle. 4. Case Study: The Problem of Evil in Grade 11 Consider the standard unit on the problem of evil. The curriculum presents the logical problem (Epicurus, Hume) and various theodicies (Augustine, Irenaeus, process theology). Students are asked to evaluate which argument is strongest.
But the 16-year-old student who has experienced real trauma—abuse, death of a parent, systemic racism—does not engage this as an abstract puzzle. For them, the problem of evil is . The curriculum provides no space to articulate that. The demand to “critically evaluate” Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds feels obscene. filosofia 11
This changes the stakes. When a student reads Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation in Filosofia 11, they are not encountering an abstract French theory. They are recognizing their lived reality: the filter, the deepfake, the influencer who sells a fake life. The hyperreal is no longer a prediction; it is the default setting. The result is that for many, Filosofia 11 becomes a
But for a minority, Filosofia 11 is a conversion event. They go on to study philosophy, then law, journalism, theology, or AI ethics. They become the ones who, decades later, trace their first genuine intellectual love back to a single passage—often from Albert Camus or Simone de Beauvoir—read in a poorly lit classroom at 10 AM on a Tuesday. Case Study: The Problem of Evil in Grade
Teachers cannot present all 2,500 years of philosophy as equally valid. They must simplify, periodize, and rank. Plato is “good,” sophists are “bad.” Nietzsche is “dangerous but important.” The result is a : students learn about philosophy rather than doing philosophy. They memorize Descartes’ proof for God’s existence, but rarely are they invited to genuinely doubt the existence of the external world for more than ten minutes.