Academically Adrift, the follow up

The authors of Academically Adrift (much discussed here last year) have released the findings of a follow up study concerning critical thinking, civic engagement, and post-collegiate employment. This looks like more good news for philosophy (if philosophy engenders critical thinking and civic engagement at least!) and bad news for business students:

One last reminder: The Good Life starts January 30

UPDATE: Chris tells me that those with access to library subscriptions to the Wiley Online Library can download the book section by section.


Well, most of us are already enjoying said life, but our online discussion of Chris Higgins' The Good Life of Teaching begins January 30. Here's my earlier introduction.

Added good news: Chris has indicated that though he wants to keep his nose out of our discussions initially, he'll do a guest post (a sort of 'reply to critics') once our discussion ends mid- February.

I hope everyone will buy the book and join the discussion!

"Not all roads lead to oneself"

The most recent edition of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy (available here) reprints a newspaper piece by Brown's Felicia Ackerman. In it, Ackerman states a rule she applies to her courses:

Teaching Philosophy Conference CFP

A Call for Papers from the American Association of Philosophy Teachers:

Dear AAPT community,

We've extended the deadline for proposals for the summer conference to be held at St. Edward's University in Austin, TX from July 25-29.  The new deadline is Thursday, February 9 and details are in the attached document.   Please consider submitting a proposal - we'd love to see you in Austin!

And if you plan on attending the Central or Pacific APA meetings, the AAPT will be running workshops at each.  Details are at our website

http://philosophyteachers.org/.

Short Readings in Philosophy?

I tend to be in a favor of using short readings in philosophy. This is because, in part, my sense is that many student populations have an especially hard time comprehending full-length philosophical essays (Jonathan Bennett has made similar observations about reading comprehension in history of philosophy courses and has developed excellent texts to address that). Given my style of teaching, I think I am typically able to get a lot of student learning out of a very short reading so I prefer them.

With this in mind, I'd like to share -- with his and his publisher's permission - Russ Shafer Landau's 2 page section "Ethical Starting Points" from his The Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford University Press) textbook. I've found this page useful at the beginning of the semester in ethics courses since it nicely identifies many moral views that most of already accept, and so it identifies some common ground or assumptions to work from (as well as critically examine as the course progresses).

Concerning this piece, I'd like to ask this: are any "starting points" anyone would like to add? Any that you'd like to remove? I'd like to also ask if there are other good short readings that anyone would like to share. Peg Tittle's What If? Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy is great in this regard - lots of 1 page or less readings -- but what else is good in the very short readings genre?

Avoiding the pitfalls of Service-Learning

I recently finished reading the manuscript of Meira Levinson’s wonderful book No Citizen Left Behind. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in K-12 education, equal opportunity, and the achievement gap. In one chapter, Levinson takes issue with service-learning because she thinks that it is often couched as a feel good apolitical non-partisan way of promoting caring and general moral concern in students without really grappling with the deep political questions of injustice and inequality. Students are able to volunteer, feel good about their contribution, but then move on without reflecting on how to confront deeper systemic and structural challenges.  She also argues that for minority students, the experience can be disempowering, especially when they are asked to engage in low-skilled menial labor. I think all of these critiques have some merit, and as I have been thinking of teaching my freshman seminar on Justice again with a service-learning component, I have been struggling to think of how to design my course to avoid some of these pitfalls. 

Student writing, signposting, and 'no surprises'

I'm currently advising 22 undergraduate philosophy theses. No kidding!

Let me share a frustration— and an insight — I recently gleaned from a recent batch of rough drafts.

Upon reading the last batch of their rough drafts, I was struck by how even the best prepared, most knowledgeable, most conscientious students gave very little explicit guidance to the reader as to how the overall argumentative strategy of the paper unfolds. Broadly generalizing, the students' papers tended to have structures like this: