BACKGROUND

During the campaign to introduce these courses it became apparent that had they been focussed exclusively on critical thinking and/or on values education, they would have gained relatively quick approval by the Ministry. However, after much examination of this question it was decided at the meetings of those proposing the courses that while a course should include these things, it should be within the framework of a general treatment of philosophy: theory of knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion and metaphysics, philosophy of human nature.

The current course outcomes, or "Expectations" as the Ministry calls them, reflect this decision. Similarly, they reflect the decision to organize the courses around questions and themes (What are good and evil? What is justice? What is a person? What is a meaningful life? etc.) rather than historically or by philosophical school. Classroom experience has supported this approach. Students express great interest in the major questions of philosophy, and the thematic approach lends itself to lively class discussion.

Another decision was that the courses should not be mandatory. Reports from jurisdictions, such as the CEGEPs in Quebec, where philosophy is required of all students, suggested that this tends to create more history-of-ideas type courses than those that elicit class engagement with philosophical issues. Optional courses also admit of more active student discussion than 'captive audience' mandatory courses.

Finally, the courses introduced in 2000 allowed much more discretion in selecting from a menu of possible focuses than is found in most other secondary school courses. This was done partly to accommodate the differing interests and backgrounds of potential teachers and partly to encourage closer work on a few topics, where critical thinking, writing, and other such transferable skills can be nurtured, as opposed to broad surveys which make it difficult to go into any topic in depth.

In 2013 the Ministry implemented a systematic review and revision of all its secondary school courses including philosophy. A main bone of contention in the review process was over how much discretion should remain in the courses. Most teachers of philosophy wanted to retain more room for discretion than did the Ministry. There were also disagreements over the addition of suggested assignments, called "Teacher Prompts," many of which were seen as too advanced for a secondary school course. The result was a compromise. The current grade 12 course is more prescriptive than its predecessor, but the weight is still on wide discretion, and it is made clear that the Prompts are no more than suggestions to teachers. The grade 11 course is retained almost intact. The original courses and the 2013 revised courses are available on the LINKS page of this website.

From their introduction in 1994 until the present, the courses have been taught by teachers most of whom had taken some philosophy in university, but who had majored in some other subject, their actual teaching subject. The reason for this is that until 2009 philosophy did not count in Ontario as what the Ministry calls a "teachable subject."

The teachables are all the subjects in the high school curriculum for which there are corresponding pedagogy courses offered by university faculties of education. Successful completion of these courses leads to a Bachelor of Education degree and accreditation by the Ontario College of Teachers, both of which are essential to any teacher candidate hoping to work in an Ontario public or Catholic school. Until 2009, such courses in philosophy pedagogy were not available. With the designation of philosophy as a teachable subject, one can now anticipate more philosophy graduates becoming secondary school teachers. They would still, however, be well advised to acquire credentials in other subjects as well, since almost no school has sufficient enrolment in philosophy to need someone to teach only that subject, and not all schools of education offer courses in the pedagogy of teaching philosophy.

UPDATE Philosophy is a teachable subject in Ontario high schools. This means that certification to teach the subject is provided by the Ontario College of Teachers only when a high school teacher completes the teacher-training in philosophy pedagogy provided by a Ministry-approved university Faculty of Education. Pre-requisites and entrance requirements may vary with the institution. For more information, visit https://www.oct.ca/public/professional-standards/how-teachers-are-certified.

It is important to remember that philosophy is a senior elective subject. Although a teacher may be qualified to teach philosophy, it may not be an available subject. The assignment of elective subjects depends entirely on enrollment and the discretion of the principal. Enrollment in senior elective subjects can vary widely from year to year.

The success in gaining approval for the grade 13 course was the culmination of a 20-year campaign. In the 1970's the philosophy department at the University of Toronto took some runs at the project, but without success. A key player in the eventually successful campaign starting in the early 1990's was Professor Christopher Olsen (now retired), in the then Department of History and Philosophy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). He and his group of graduate students organized the Ontario High School Philosophy Project which included a website dedicated to secondary school philosophy. Another early advocate, Ian Winchester, left OISE a few years after introduction of the course to take up the post of Dean of Education at Calgary. In addition to developing a sample curriculum on which the grade 13 course was based, the Project hosted a meeting in the early 1980's of high school teachers, some parents, and some university professors of philosophy. The unexpectedly high turn-out for this meeting and the enthusiasm of the participants launched the major campaign.

Central to the campaign were three meetings of representatives of university philosophy departments from nearly all the universities in Ontario, who discussed and debated both the desirability of pursuing the endeavour and what philosophy in secondary school instruction should be. Having agreed to pursue the campaign, a committee of chairs of Ontario University Philosophy Departments became one of the advocates for the course.

Simultaneously, a committee largely comprised of secondary school teachers from all regions of the Province was struck, which in 1999 became the Ontario Philosophy Teachers' Association (OPTA). It organizes an annual conference largely devoted to workshops on both substantive and pedagogical philosophical matters and draws on university philosophy professors to initiate its workshops and to give keynote addresses. The first was delivered by Ian Hacking in 2003. OPTA is recognized by the Ministry, the OCT and the OTF as the official subject association for philosophy in the schools, and as such advises the Ministry on pertinent matters and acts as an interest group for the discipline. Two university professors of philosophy - Frank Cunningham, University of Toronto and David Jopling, York University - sit on its executive. Its president is Kenneth Peglar, now retired, who taught philosophy at the secondary school level for 12 years.

Winchester, along with several other professors of philosophy from the U of T and some high school teachers constituted the Ministerial guideline writing team for the grade 13 course. The course Guidelines were published in 1994. When, in 1998, the Provincial government announced closure of grade 13, it struck a broadly based consultative group to deliberate about the new curriculum. At its meetings there was strong, unanimous support both to retain an analogue of the existing course in the College/University destination in grade 12 and also to design a course at the grade 11 level in the Open, non-university or college, category. The Expectations for these courses were written in 1999 and introduced in the schools in 2000. Cunningham and Jopling were on this Ministry writing team and received advice from the OPTA executive and from the Committee of Ontario Philosophy Chairs. These courses remain among the very few secondary school philosophy offerings with official, government-produced curricula in the English-speaking world.