High School Curriculum
The high school curriculum is a year-long course built for teachers to adopt directly. Each unit takes a single perennial question and gives it a full week, moving students from first reactions toward views they can defend and revise.
Every week follows the same arc. Students open with discussion to map the terrain, then work through analogy (thought experiments, paradoxes, fables), history (how thinkers have wrestled with the question for centuries), and close reading (two philosophers set against each other). They finish by steel-manning the view they reject, then return to where they began to ask what changed and what held.
Engage in a discussion and get a feel for the landscape of the theme.
Thought experiments, paradoxes, fables.
Lecture displaying the way in which humans have wrestled with this theme for centuries.
Two philosophers contradicting one another, examined with a fine-toothed comb.
Steel-man the view you reject. Attack it. Find the shared assumption and reconcile.
Return to day one. What changed? What held? Why?
The aim is students who think more abstractly, sit with complexity, disagree productively, and revise their own beliefs. For the full scope and sample units, reach out at education@nyphilosophy.org.