Philosophy and Education

In the French curriculum I followed, when I was 17 I had to take a year of a philosophy course. One hour a week or something and it was in the final exams (A levels, bachelor's degree, ... Anyway the one you take when you are 18 and kind of decides what you will be doing next).

I was never very literary, I was Mr logical; loved math, kind of saw the point of physics, liked biology but the rest was pretty much background noise. I could barely write essays, I was either pretty good or really bad (mostly bad of course) and never quite understood the difference between the good ones and the bad ones. I have been known, not by many, to write poetry when in love. I could actually spontaneously rhyme when in love, of course this went all away once I moved to a non French speaking country. I did not understand the  point of philosophy. It very seemed to be idle debating about something, anything really, that most people already had an opinion about. What should I write 3 pages of something when I can explain my opinions in a few sentences.

For the exam I had something like, who is the best person to really know who I am. I did badly. But the question stayed with me for a very long time, I hate to loose I suppose. This question, and this alone, taught me more about philosophy than all the courses (not that many really) that we took.
At the time, my view of the world was very simple. I did not understand that it called for a definition of who or what I am. I was the sum of my experiences therefore I am the best person to know who I am. Pretty silly question when you make this assumption. Who else knows about all the experiences I have been through. I can see now why I did not do so well.
Maybe now I am more capable of fooling myself I know more than I used to. I start asking myself the kind of questions like:

• Am I the sum of my experiences or am I what I made of them?
• Can 2 people with the same experiences have the same personality or even be the same person?
• Which brings us to can 2 different people really have the same experiences?

I am starting to understand the question when a tree falls but no-one sees/hears it, is it still falling? Although my favorite one is if a man says something and no women hears him, is he still wrong? I can see how it is hard to prove/disprove whether the external world is what we perceived it to be through imperfect interpretation of language and senses that are consistently filtering out information, otherwise there would be too much to process. I am still not sure about what is the sound of a one hand clap? Maybe I will have a better idea about that one within the next 10 years or so.

I am not sure I am a converted yet, I still have a very pragmatic approach to the whole thing. I am not sure trying to prove the existence of God or that the external world might not be what my experience of it tells me it is. In the end of the day, we can only do what seems to make sense at the time we do it.
I have some sympathy for the Buddhist approach, quite your mind and you will be able to know yourself. I believe that when we are quiet and separated from the outside influence, we are mostly good (without having the need to define what it means). I am hoping we are all good, but I am nowhere near that special place, so I am not sure.

Finally I am hoping that in the future, religion, philosophy, biology and philosophy will merge into one know it all discipline. I'd rather not be there when it happens though. I enjoy having a little mystery in my life and not knowing everything there is to know. Hopefully it is not possible and it is just something to strive for and that you can never reach. On the other hand, one can hope that a better understanding of the human nature would lead to a better world. So I suppose I am all in favor of philosophy after all. I just wished it had been presented a little bit better when was was younger.