While we in the US are cutting back on the humanities including philosophy at all levels, philosophy is a requited subject in Brazil’s high schools.
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.
Read Carlos Fraenkel’s fascinating piece in the Boston Review. Fraenkel is an associate professor in McGill’s Departments of Philosophy and Jewish Studies. My only disappointment in this otherwise abnormally interesting article is that I never learn if "Canadian bacon is the best in the world." 
Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog – Brian says of Brazil, “An enlightened country, unlike the United States.”