A 2008 law requires ALL Brazilian high school students to study PHILOSOPHY for 3 years!
Getting out of the cave and seeing things as they really are: that’s what philosophy is about, according to Almira Ribeiro. Ribeiro teaches the subject in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever met.
snip
“But seeing things as they really are isn’t enough,” Ribeiro insists. As in Plato’s parable in The Republic, the students must go back to the cave and apply what they’ve learned. Their lives give them rich opportunities for such application. The contrast between the new luxury hotels along the beach and Itapuã’s overcrowded streets gives rise to questions about equality and justice. Children kicking around a can introduce a discussion about democracy: football is one of the few truly democratic practices here; success depends on merit, not class privilege. Moving between philosophy and practice, the students can revise their views in light of what Plato, Hobbes, or Locke had to say about equality, justice, and democracy and discuss their own roles as political agents.
snip
The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?
snip
But can philosophy really become part of ordinary life? Wasn’t Socrates executed for trying? Athenians didn’t thank him for guiding them to the examined life, but instead accused him of spreading moral corruption and atheism. Plato concurs: Socrates failed because most citizens just aren’t philosophers in his view. To make them question the beliefs and customs they were brought up in isn’t useful because they can’t replace them with examined ones. So Socrates ended up pushing them into nihilism. To build politics on a foundation of philosophy, Plato concludes, doesn’t mean turning all citizens into philosophers, but putting true philosophers in charge of the city—like parents in charge of children. I wonder, though, why Plato didn’t consider the alternative: If citizens had been trained in dialectic debate from early on—say, starting in high school—might they have reacted differently to Socrates? Perhaps the Brazilian experiment will tell.
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/carlos_fraenkel_brazil_teaching_philosophy.php
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sounds like a great idea. However, I don't think it would work here. Let's face it, some states are teaching creationism as science so imagine philosophy. I had to suffer the agony of reading St Augustine's 'Confessions' and St Aquinas "Summa Theologica" as a Master course, imagine me reading that in HS… ?
It takes a certain type of teacher to teach philosophy. I am glad they can enjoy their lectures. 
I am very pleased to see a country which encourages thought, rather than our current system. Why can't this work here?
A program can be written to include elements of philosophy to teach a few basic lessons. One example was already given in the article, the implications of Plato's Cave. Other basic ideas or teaching could also include the theories of Pre-Socratics philosophers (for example The Atomists) who spoke of atoms centuries before the discovery of a microscope. Or Heraclitus for another example, how everything is in constant change, etc. Hypatia (one of the first women philosophers?), etc. etc.
I am not a teacher but, IMO there is a lot they can learn from philosophy.
