As I've always suspected, philosophy makes you both smarter and cooler. According to this article from the Telegraph, from the UK, teaching philosophy courses to young children in Scotland improved their I.Q.'s by 6.5 points and showed subsequent long-term improved intellectual performance, even when they were no longer taking philosophy classes.The students also showed enhanced levels of self-confidence and emotional awareness, which resulted in improved classroom behavior - every teacher's dream, I'm sure. Whoever said that philosophy is depressing simply did not understand how much fun it is and how psychologically beneficial its practice can be.
The idea behind this social experiment, and it seems to me a very cogent one, is that younger students have much more mental flexibility than their older counterparts, and since they are still creating neural connections in their brains, it would only stand to reason that their mental capacities would improve as a result of this enhancement in stimulation.
It should come as no surprise that this took place in Scotland, land of such great philosophical thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Brown, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, James Mill.
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