http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22729780

If you take a Bac Litteraire in France, philosophy counts more marks than any other subject. This, of course, is a spin-off of the French Revolution, though it was actually Napoleon who introduced it into the syllabus.

It teaches French people to think. Whether they are better at thinking than the English, national pride will tell us. We learnt to think from Classics, except that few of us learn classics any longer. I am re-reading Plato's Republic right now, but I can't cope with Wittgenstein.

Seriously, though, should we learn philosophy? Are English people good at thinking logically? Or do they just leap from point to point on inspiration? (when they're not doing it on horseback)

Thai academics notoriously can't think. Read articles by Thai academics, and you will see what I mean.

Id love to see philosophy taught in schools as part of a standard syllabus in High School years. For my frame of reference of Australian education, that is the last 6 years of school.

I remember in Australia recently there was an attempt to remove Religion and replace it with 'Ethics' in state schools. That is the closest I have seen to having something near Philosophy taught as part of the standard syllabus. Of course that push was more about removing religion and replacing it with a benign secularism.

One of the main hindrances introducing the subject is likely to be its perceived lack of tools in providing skills to be workforce ready and employable. The opposite is of course true for many jobs. Having the tools to be able to question and reason through many a situation has applications throughout the business and working world.

A director of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation once told me that he was amazed how many Classics graduates he was appointing. Why? Because they could think.