What reasons could there be not to teach Spinoza in secondary school?

manpreet Best Answer 3 years ago

In The Netherlands, it's on some schools possible to get philosophy taught from the fourth to the sixth grade of high school (that's the age group 15-18). I've done this.

I discovered that Spinoza's doctrine is scarcely taught in our country on secondary schools. Me were given two reasons by two, both not authoritative, sources:

1. Spinoza is too different. Teaching his ideas would make philosophy a lot harder, on topics as ethics (political philosophy) and metaphysics.
2. It isn't good for the society to bring young students in contact with Spinoza's doctrine. It would disrupt the society and it therefore is kept out of the examination syllabuses.

I've read chapters of Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise, and found it to be very compact written and (relatively to for example Plato, Aristotle, Locke or even Kant) extremely hard to decipher what he meant, but when I had deciphered that, it was clear to me what the reasoning was. I therefore tend to disagree with the first given reason.

My questions are:

• Is Spinoza's Political Treatise relatively easy to understand in comparison with his other works?
• Could Spinoza's ideas really be found that disrupting? (I found not.)
• What could be other reasons for not teaching Spinoza, that I missed?