Abstract

The ancient Athenians, whose cultural contributions form the cornerstone of much of Western Civilization, considered philosophy to be the most essential of all educational disciplines. If we accept this notion, then we today are guilty of woeful neglect regarding the place of philosophical training in modern education. One of the great difficulties in the contemporary classroom is that students today, and, by and large, many of their teachers have never had that which they learn and teach anchored in any philosophical foundation. They may learn that George Washington was the first president of the United States but they have scarce reason to understand why he may have been a great man. ;The values and value systems of culture and society rarely find their way into the crowded curricula of contemporary education and, in fact, they have been pushed to the bottom of the priority ladder, either by design or through ignorance. We may forgive ourselves this sin as it pertains to the mainstream classroom but among those students whom we classify as the best and the brightest the omission is not desirable. The problem therefore is obvious. How to introduce philosophical training into the classrooms of talented and gifted students and teachers in order to facilitate the qualitative thinking of pupils and to give them a rationale for the formation of ideas and opinions in all the disciplines to which they are exposed. ;This study accumulated data from teachers of AP classes, and the results of the survey indicate that many teachers do not utilize the prescribed methods and strategies recommended by a review of the literature in the field of gifted education. Based upon the results of this study, the author has arrived at the conclusion that, in order to improve upon the way in which gifted and talented high school students absorb and synthesize what they learn, and to make that which they are taught more relevant to their education and ultimately their lives, students taking AP courses should be offered an additional class in "doing philosophy."