Philosophy 10
HUMANITIES FACULTY
| 🎓 Course Type | Elective |
|---|---|
| 🧩 Units | 1 |
| 🗓 Timing | Year 10 |
| ⏱ Hours per week | 3 |
| 📚 Prior Experience | Humanities 7-9 |
| ✏️ Selection | Up to 4 units of Humanities electives may be studied in Year 10 |
| 🧭 Future Pathways | This course assists students with skill preparation for all 11/12 Humanities subjects. |
This is a single unit elective which can be taken in Semester 1 or 2.
Philosophy helps students to understand the world in which we live and ways that people think. The Year 10 Philosophy course introduces big questions that have preoccupied humans for thousands of years and remain highly relevant to present day social, political and environmental issues.
The course develops critical and creative thinking skills that enable students to analyse and evaluate their own beliefs and those of others. It encourages open-mindedness toward new ideas, flexibility in one’s own thinking, and a willingness to change personal beliefs when presented with compelling reasons for doing so.
Because it teaches transferable critical thinking skills, Philosophy is excellent preparation for the intellectual challenges of the IB Diploma and TCE courses. Classroom activities include analysing real-world events and issues, class debates, and analysing philosophical films.
Key inquiry questions:
- What is truth?
- What is real?
- What, if anything, causes me to remain the same person over time?
- How can I tell right from wrong?
- Do I have ethical obligations toward non-human animals?
- How, if at all, should we be governed?
Key philosophers and topics may include:
- Plato’s allegory of the cave
- Rene Descartes argument for the self - ‘I think, therefore, I am’
- Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist notion that ‘existence precedes essence’
- Peter Singer’s argument for animal liberation
- Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism.