Every high school student should have to take a philosophy course
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
The question is never what would be good to add to a curriculum; the question is what we should remove.
Students _could_ have classes on statistics, critical thinking, physical education, some sort of art, the "classics", religion, emotional intelligence, resilience, entrepreneurship, ...
Share a point-of-view on which parts of the high school curriculum should be dropped to make room for these and then we can have a _real_ debate (slash argument).
Students can test out of classes early (or get placed out if they solve challenge AKA from-the-next-section problems on tests, or something), and take the other classes instead. Not everyone will be learning everything, like how not everyone takes calculus or advanced chemistry before going to college, but better to teach some students extra then waste their time “teaching” them stuff they already know.
Another issue is, whose going to teach those courses? But we can consolidate classes and rely more on programs like Khan Academy, with teachers only devoting their time to students who struggle. Lots of teaching can be done via just computers at least for advanced students.
I came of age in the 1990's, the era of participation trophies and "follow your passions" / "you can become whatever you want." Anecdotally, societal pressure to push students into STEM wasn't really a thing yet.
We had the same problems then as the author is having now: too many people who are incapable of critical thought and worrying more about rote memorization.
OTOH, there are quite a few topics in entry-level Philosophy which are likely to be political hot buttons in any public school system...
A teenager in the modern world has just not lived long enough to put these ideas in any kind of context.
It just becomes an exercise in memorization and test taking.
I think of my 16 year old self contemplating the ideas of Schopenhauer. What could be a bigger waste of time? Just preposterous, just making kids hate the subject.