I would hardly call sitting down and writing a 4 hour test "doing it right" when it comes to philosophy. In my opinion, philosophy is a mandatory subject but it should be focused on debate, not essay-writing.
The US curriculum attempts to teach students how to write, they just don't do a particularly good job at it most of the time. Also, it's very frequent that highschool teachers will still give decent grades to poorly written essays and papers, which may give many students a false impression that they're decent at writing when they really aren't.
(Usually this illusion is shattered once/if they attend university, thankfully.)
Are you kidding? The US system is completely devoted to writing. All my English classes were centered around writing essays (usually about the books we read).
In fact, I'd argue the opposite. The French system places a big emphasis on learning grammar, conjugations, spelling and things like that - which frankly is a waste of time. I don't think I ever took a grammar course in the US. I couldn't tell you what a prepositional phrase is, but I can write a good essay.
I can write a good essay, too, but I don't really attribute that to my schooling. Learning to write a good essay has one essential ingredient: you have to care about what you're trying to express. If you're just writing to the specification, you won't improve at anything except creating filler content.
I learned how to write a good essay because I thought I had something to say and I wanted people to hear it and understand it. Same with other facets of communication, like public speaking.
My personal experience hasn't been the same. I used to be really bad at writing, but through the school system forcing me to write I got significantly better. I think I'm pretty good now-a-days, though I'm a bit rusty.
Sure you get better at things you actually enjoy doing, but sometimes you need to force yourself or - in the case of children - be forced to do something over and over to learn. I think teachers try to make writing more interesting, but it can be a pretty hard thing to do. Most kids will hate it no matter what they write.
Writing, perhaps, but not good writing. Most of good writing is the ability to synthesize ideas and construct prose people want to read.
Nobody wants to read your average student's five paragraph essay. On the other hand, I spent a large part of the weekend bingeing on Michael O. Church's blog, because the dude can write.
It definitely focuses on writing a lot. The other thing to take into account though is that nearly every test in the Baccalaureat lasts 3 hours or more, including the science ones (4 hours for Maths and Physics, and 3 1/2 hours for Biology/Geology).
I am from Germany, and philosophy was pretty much the main topic of the ethics class for the two last grades when I was at high school. We had debates of all sorts as part of the curriculum, but we had also learned how to collect and present our arguments in the written form. So I think writing an essay for 4 hours may very well be suitable for a philosophy exam.
The 4 hour test is usually a 4 hour essay , where you're expected to write around a 6 page dissertation on the subject. At least when I took it , there was also the option to read a text and do an analysis on that.
The problem with oral debate is that its too easy to fall into the "persuade" aspect instead of "convince". And the last thing we need is pupils yelling at each other all the time. By forcing the argumentation in a written form, you make it a lot harder to write fallacious reasoning without being called on it.
Also, it should be remembered that is a country-wide exam with a 2 or 3 months deadline for the marks (with of course, not enough teachers to do such a huge job), and the students are supposed to be evaluated equally.
That said, the typical dissertation includes a synthetic part where the ideas of the previous parts, which expose one thesis and its opposite. So there is a form of debate there, but again what is judged is the consistency rather than the opinions supported by the student (at least that's how it was when I took it, in the scientific-oriented version of the "Bac").
The material is one thing, testing on it is another... a 4 hour test sounds bad, but one would think that if they're teaching philosophy in the first place, then they sort of know what they're doing.
there's nothing wrong with a 4 or even a 6 hours test for a subject such as philosophy! there's no point in adding time pressure to a philosophy test - the point is not to think efficiently (it's not math or science!), but to think deep, think wide/laterally and to be creative in confined area of thought and to express your thought in a finished and refined form. If you add time pressure, they will just memorize the "correct interpretations" for the test, the "correct way to talk/write about topic x" and so on, just to be able to do things in time (and those who don't memorize ...or cheat, will get worse test scores, so there will be no incentive do things the right way) nulling the whole point of it!
...otoh, having a "philosophy test" in school kind of kills all the use or fun of the subject, but if you do it, at least try to get something out of it by not adding unnecessary constraints!
> the point is not to think efficiently (it's not math or science!),
That's not the difference between philosophy and math. The difference is one of effectivity, not efficiency. Science adds real-world relevance, but substracts rigour.
