Higgins, Chapter 1: Work and Flourishing

I should probably start with an admission: so far, Higgins is preaching to the choir in my own case (I’m actually teaching a seminar on Charles Taylor this semester, so I find myself very sympathetic to Higgins’ way of organizing his discussion). Much of what he says resonates with me on a number of levels, particularly theoretically (in terms of ethics in general) and professionally (in terms of teaching). Since it's the first chapter of the book, my aim is not to be critical. Instead, I’ll simply summarize some of the key points of what I see Higgins’ project to be thus far (and it’s a big one) and then at the end of the post I’ll ask a few brief questions to get things started conversationally.

Learning From Bob

A while ago, Becko wrote a provocative post about the need to learn "from the right students". We all know who the wrong student is, by the way - the one who is hostile, disruptive, outraged - you know the type. We all hope on the first day that we don't spot this student sitting here, glaring at us. As Becko rightly put it:

We will all spend stressful and sleepless nights worrying over this student. Worse, I suggest, we think to change our teaching based on his behavior...Allow me to suggest that we should not learn from this student.

As I noted in the comments to her post, I think Becko is right to point out that we spend way too much time thinking about this student -- I called him "Bob" just to give him a name -- to the detriment of other students who may not only need our help, but who may actually want (and thus be open to) that help. I'm also convinced that focusing on Bob also leads to lousy pedagogical behavior. Still, whereas Becko thinks there's nothing to be learned from Bob, I do think there are some things that we can learn from him, or at least that we can teach ourselves we unfortunately have Bob around every MWF or TuTh for sixteen weeks. I'm not saying that I've mastered the Bob Experience - I haven't, as this would require a sage-like meditative capacity that I don't possess -- but I have some basic ideas. I'll talk a bit about my own experiences with Bob below, and then mention some brief observations about what to do when Bob is (unfortunately) around.

Assessing Ethics

I've recently taken on a new job/role - the 'coordinator' for the ethics component of the general education curriculum at my university. Part of this role requires figuring out how to assess the ethics courses we teach. Although I have thought about ethics assessment before in the past, it was never my role to formally take it on, so I'm starting from scratch in many ways.

Since so many people here teach ethics, I'm hoping that some of you have suggestions about where to look to read about best practices in ethics assessment. I'm also hoping to hear some of your thoughts on ethics assessment in general. What do you take to be the greatest current mistake in how it is typically done? If you had your druthers, how would you do it? Of course, these questions all circle around the most central and core question: what should the goal of a general education ethics course be?

Thank in advance, and looking forward to your thoughts.

Op-Ed Response to Kathleen Parker

Hi ISWers - Sorry for my absence lately, I'm in the midst of a crazy time period, and I'm a bit overextended. I wanted to share the op-ed I wrote below in response to Kathleen Parker's national column last week, in which she used findings from ACTA and from _Academically Adrift_ to wag a heavy handed finger at colleges for failing students. The op-ed appears in my local paper today - I figured I'd just cut and paste it here.

---

Kathleen Parker argues that colleges are failing to teach basic skills (critical/complex reasoning, writing and communication). I agree that that these skills are essential, and share her concern that college students are not learning those skills at an acceptable level. Parker's analysis of the problem (drawing on misleading studies by ACTA) is that schools lack quality general education curricula, and so should create them.

Parker is wrong - in many universities quality curricula already exist. She's also wrong to think of a curriculum as a conveyor belt that transports students through appropriate subjects until basic skills have been passively assembled. In fact, this passive understanding of education actually helps to create the very problem she is so worried about.

From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement

(This is from a Chronicle article Karla posted on Twitter; I thought it might be useful to reproduce it here without comment)

It was the semester from hell. In my 20 years as an adjunct faculty member, I had taught in the Ivy League and at community colleges, in Brattleboro and Bangkok, in under­graduate and graduate schools. Never had I seen such extraordinarily bad behavior in my students.

It began the first night of the graduate class, spring semester 2010, when the students attacked the syllabus for being too demanding (although it was premised on previous syllabi for the same course at the same institution). The evening went steadily downhill. I'll spare you the gruesome details, but the next day I got a call from an administrator asking me to deal with the complaints that some students had registered about me and the course. The charges they'd made were ludicrous and easily explained, but I was stunned.

Philosophy Students Rock!

(cross posted at A Ku Indeed!)

On my Twitter feed, I noticed Stephen Law's post regarding the usefulness of philosophy as an undergraduate major. Law has some interesting graphs showing comparative scores on GREs, both of which I reproduce below the fold with some comments. The graphs show what I think some already know: with respect to writing and verbal scores, philosophy majors far outperform every other major (including English). When it comes to the quantitative portion, philosophy majors score better than all majors in the Humanities, better than quite a few in the sciences, but under the hard sciences generally. Overall, with respect to composite GRE scores, philosophy students are in the top of the field, if not constituting the very top itself. Basically: if you are looking to hire someone with outstanding critical, verbal, and written ability - and someone with strong quantitative ability - hire a philosophy major!

Academically Adrift Part 4: A Call to Arms

In all of the previous threads we've started on Academically Adrift, there's a common theme: the crisis in higher education and the need for us to wake up to it, analyze it, and figure out some solutions. Becko says that there's a "disengagement compact" (I like this phrase) in which parties are given incentives not to ask for, demand, or offer good teaching; Mike says that part of the problem is that we don't recognize the desperate need to institute virtues into the curriculum, and Jason, mindful of the crisis, wants us to be careful in our attempt to capture "good teaching" (it's not something that can be captured simply in quantitative terms), pointing out that we also need the humility to acknowledge that many undergraduate teachers simply do not know how to teach well.

That's a lot to chew on. To be honest (and I'm in agreement with all of their concerns), it's a bit depressing and overwhelming! The problems are so large and systemic that it's hard to imagine any way out. Below the fold, after a brief overview of what I take to be the main claim of the book, I want to move to a more empowering subject: how to take some stabs at fixing the problem. I don't have a lot of solutions, but I know where, as teachers, we need to devote our attentions: tenure and promotions procedures. Let's talk about them.

Defending the Humanities Through...Philosophy of Mind?

(cross posted at A Ku Indeed!)

Today I had a conversation with some colleagues about how to define the Humanities and how to best represent it in a curriculum. These are always contentious questions to talk about, as there are multiple disciplines within the Humanities, each with its own content, its own mode of presentation and approaches, and each with its own methodology. So coming to agreement on such “umbrella” questions is not an easy thing to do.

As the day went on, I continued to think about it as well as about the crisis of the Humanities (it being, as time goes on, funded less, having fewer students, coming under more and more attack by the public as useless). At one point my mind shifted to a different topic: I started thinking about how my Philosophy of Mind course — in which we are reading David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind — was going. For a second I laughed a bit, thinking that the two subjects couldn’t possibly be more different. The gushy Humanities and the overly scientific and technical approach to consciousness grounded in property dualism, as undertaken by Chalmers. Then it struck me: maybe the two topics aren’t as far apart as I supposed. Wait, I thought...doesn’t Chalmers’ book provide us with an unintentional defense not only of the Humanities but also with a way of talking about its essence? No doubt, the connection is not without some faults and tensions, but it definitely made me think about subject in a different way. This is a long post, a bit rambly, and may not make total sense. If you can make it through, I'd love to hear your impressions of these inchoate thoughts!

Finding the Mean in Intro to Philosophy

(cross posted at A Ku Indeed)

Without a doubt, of all the courses I have taught, the most frustrating is Introduction to Philosophy (called “Classic Problems in Philosophy” at my college). Every time I teach it I am left thinking that the course was a total bust for one reason or another. I typically then try to fix the problems from the last run and alter the course next time, only to find that the changes fix those problems but create whole set of other new ones. Trying to figure out the course structure for this class that seems to maximally “work” can drive you a bit nuts.

One of the problems with this particular course is that it’s hard to nail down what it is meant to accomplish – or, perhaps, another way to think about it is that it actually needs to accomplish too many things at once because there are so many different types of students in it. On the one hand, there are the prospective majors or minors you would like to attract, so you need to give them enough coverage and depth in particular issues to allow them to more seamlessly integrate into the next higher level of philosophy classes.

On the other hand, it is clear that the course is mostly filled with non-majors. Some students take the course because they think it is interesting, some take it because it fills a distribution requirement, and some take it because it fit their schedule (and some for one or more of those reasons combined). That’s a lot of people with a lot of different agendas. Moreover, it’s also a simple fact that an introduction-level course in philosophy tends to have students with a wide range of abilities, a range that is considerably narrower in upper divisional philosophy courses. Let’s face it, for some students, theoretical abstract thinking of the type done in philosophy comes easy, or is fun. For others, it’s an extremely difficult task that they never seem to really get the hang of, much less enjoy. So you need to challenge the ones with more ability while not leaving the others behind – lost, dispirited, and probably hating philosophy as a subject.

There are so many ways to talk about the difficulties of teaching this class well. In this post, though, I just want to think about a a narrower question, with the above concerns in mind — should you use more content or less? In my previous times teaching this class, I went with a “three problem” format, where I taught a problem a month (lot of detail, obviously). Students who want to major love that approach. The rest: not so much. Moreover, all students are left with the incorrect belief that philosophers really just think about mind, free will, and personal identity, and that’s it.

This time, I swung the pendulum the other way completely. I used a book with 50 problems in it, and we covered a problem a day (36 in total, I think). My original thinking was that this approach would be better for the larger percentage of the class, as we wouldn’t get too deep into any particular issue so philosophy would be more accessible. At the same time, I figured, majors and minors would get a better grasp of the whole field, and I thought that might serve them well later on.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. I think this method is a failure – or at least it was for me teaching it. The future majors and minors were fine. No problem with them – but they are naturally interested in the subject, are willing to overcome frustration, and probably have higher ability levels overall (not that we make them that way — philosophy majors tend to come in with pretty high ACTs). The rest of the class…well, it didn’t work as well for the most part.

Why? I think I honestly underestimated, for one thing, just how difficult these problems really are. The book was simple – each problem discussion was four pages long — so very “coffee table” oriented, content-wise. But once you start talking about these issues, it is clear that each problem is a world unto itself and difficult to get one’s head around in one hour. Each of them requires more than a day to discuss, even if you keep things very, very simple.

Hence the problem: because the problems are so theoretically complicated – even when they are treated simply — many students (I think) felt frustrated and likely developed a feeling of helplessness. With no time to digest each problem, talk about it, reflect on it, and so on, it was like being hit by a mallet every class. “Didn’t understand Wittenstein’s beetle problem? Well, no worries, we’ll be moving on to the Liar’s Paradox next time, where you’ll be similarly thrown for a loop! And then on to the Veil of Perception! Ha ha!” I can only imagine how that approach dispirited many, leading them into total frustration.

This is leading me to think that perhaps the best approach is like virtue – in the mean. Not three problems, but not 36 either. Perhaps one problem a week, using the same book I just used. One way to go about it might be to ask students to choose, at the start of the semester, the 15 problems that seem most interesting out of the 50. From there, you can work on week-long discussions (with extra handouts and reading, perhaps) on those topics. I think this might actually work – not too much content, not too little, a lower level of depth but more time to reflect, digest and think about the problems we are looking at.

Or at least that’s what I’m thinking at the moment. Any ideas? Similar frustrations? Perfect solutions?

Episode 2: Martha Nussbaum, Gabriel Marcel, and Glenn Beck

There’s really not much in the second chapter of Nussbaum’s book that I disagree with – in fact, I found myself doing a lot of affirmative nodding and muttering “preach it!” to myself under my breath as I read along. I’ll first mention a positive reaction I had to the chapter, and then focus on a concern that I break into two parts.

Much of what Nussbaum says reminds me strongly of the thinking of Gabriel Marcel (who I also tend to enjoy quite a bit). For Marcel, some approaches to life are ‘problem’ oriented (Nussbaum’s ‘growth’ model), and see things/situations as ‘problems to be solved’. Marcel thought that such an approach inherently involved drawing up a separation between the agent and the problem, and the cultivation of ‘techniques’ possessed by the agent to control and/or master the problem/thing. Other approaches are ‘mystery’ oriented (closer to Nussbaum’s human development model), and see things (or some one or more things) as not reducible to a formula or complete reductive understanding. They always involve an overlap between the agent and the issue in view, as opposed to a separation, and they do not involve techniques of mastery or control, but rather carefully cultivated attitudes (Marcel’s ethics) and abilities like creativity, faith, hope and love.

It’s not hard to see that approaching life always as a ‘problem’ leads a person to see others as means to an end (as they are objects to be controlled), always involves attempts to reduce others to ‘formulas’ and categories that can be ‘understood’ in a reductive manner, and so on, whereas seeing relations with others as in some sense involving mystery involves a kind of basic respect for the irreducibility of the other, and a commitment to cultivating critical thinking, creativity, tolerance, and love in one’s life. Clearly, the Marcel/Nussbaum approach is superior for the fostering of a strong democracy, whereas the remaining approach is destructive to it. I agree and concur.

Thinking in terms of respecting ‘the other’ made me think of a specific set of others – my students and their parents. Many of them, in Southwest Missouri where I teach, would not react well to what Nussbaum (or Marcel) says. Moreover, it struck me that Marcel-reading philosophers shouldn’t be Nussbaum’s intended audience – my students and their parents should be. I’m already convinced by the need for the Humanities. They aren’t, and frankly they are the ones who will lead the market-driven end to the Humanities that Nussbaum fears. So I tried to re-read the chapter through their eyes. Although I think I could come up with a lot of responses from their point of view, I’ll focus just on two questions or concerns that would arise quickly.

I. Objection One: I Pay a LOT of Money for College, and Nussbaum’s Concerns Aren’t My Own

We can read Nussbaum’s chapter as focusing on all private and/or public education, primary and secondary, and/or college. Clearly she means all of it, but some specific attention is given to colleges. I teach at a private liberal arts college. Many of my students and their parents are not interested in paying 20K a year to assure that democracy flourishes, or that students cultivate capacities that may or may not (in their view) lead to human flourishing. Instead, they are there to learn a trade, to earn the degree that functions as the gate keeper to the middle class and a low chance of future unemployment. Twenty thousand bucks is a lot of money, and let’s face it – my school is cheap.

Given that reality, how do we convince those in the audience that the Humanities are needed? Of course, the obvious way to go is to convince people of the instrumental good that these skills play in assisting people in their future economic pursuits. So we convince them that all those philosophy and romance literature courses really are, in the end, getting them the maximum bang for their buck.

Personally, I think as Humanities educators we do a poor job in outlining why this is actually true (me included). However, with Marcel in mind, I wonder: do we even want to reduce the Humanities to an instrumental good, to see it as yet another “technique” in the tool-kit of a person who already sees the world and others as ‘problems to be solved’ (controlled/manipulated)? I think Nussbaum would clearly say no, but I am not left, at this point in the book, with a good way of attacking this concern. I’m also left thinking that we are faced with a paradox that is similar to the paradox of virtue: how do you get people to approach the Humanities as a valued embrace of the mysterious if they are not already disposed to think this way? If they are not so disposed, what do we do then?

II. Objection Two: Isn’t Nussbaum Just a Card-Carrying Liberal?

Of course, one way is to appeal to a sense of justice that people have already from the start. In fact, Nussbaum spends a lot of time pointing out that growth orientation does not necessarily lead to increases of liberty, health, education, just distribution of resources, and so on. My imagined audience might well agree, suggesting that growth is not a sufficient condition for the more robust set of goods Nussbaum prizes.

However, I can easily imagine some of my students and their parents agreeing, but thinking that in the US we already have the kinds of minimum political entitlements that, with the growth model, suffice for justice. If there are inequities beyond this, this is not injustice but a matter of choice on the part of individuals (work harder!). According to these folks, the growth model + negative liberties are sufficient. To argue otherwise, they will object, is to inject a clear political – liberal -- aim into the education system. At that point you’re trying to train my kid (or my friend) to be a good liberal. Let’s face it -- that’s not going to play well on FOX and on Glenn Beck, and frankly the audience Nussbaum needs to hit to achieve her aim importantly includes that demographic.

So at this point, we’re left with an instrumental approach or a justice approach. The former caves into the very problem itself, the latter approach requires ‘going liberal’ (sort of like ‘going rogue’). Is that liberal approach present? To quote a famous speaker, “You betcha!” Just to mention one case: Nussbaum talks about how ‘fear’ can operate as the motive to suppress critical thinking, and that the adherents to the growth-model can push for the suppression of such thinking and such education out of a worry that basic injustices (on a number of levels) springing from growth-based systems will become apparent, and such transparency is destabilizing for the growth model. For the American conservative reader, this will sound off the wall, and an educational system (the Humanities!) that is based in this kind of thinking will be seen as indoctrinating in aim.

In sum, and again, I love this book – its message and its aim. However, given that I do truly care about both of these things, I so far worry about the delivery here. My concern is that non-true believers are not going to be motivated by much of what Nussbaum says – perhaps they may even be less disposed to the Humanities in the end.
These are all large problems I am pointing to here – not just for Nussbaum, but for all of us. Admittedly, I have no idea how to solve them without falling back into the trap of arguing for the instrumental value of the Humanities, and as I’ve already suggested, there is something not-quite authentic about that approach – in fact, when I use it, I am always under the impression that I am not being entirely genuine, and it bugs me.

Humor Break

Type the rest of your post here.

Waving Bye Bye to Tenure

This article from the Chronicle, "Tenure, RIP" is just chock full of stuff to talk about and discuss, so I'll just post the link here without comment and let you all have at it. Something tells me this thread might be a doozy.

Type the rest of your post here.

Philosophy in Middle School

This summer I've volunteered to do a few lectures for a summer scholar program (in its third year) at my university. The program basically invites to campus a number of local middle school students (7th and 8th grade) who (a) come from disadvantaged backgrounds and (b) have been identified as having solid academic promise. This is the first time I've worked with the program, so I'm starting from the ground up on how to approach the lectures and discussions. I've never worked with students of this age, so I'm looking for any suggestions any of you might have on a few key questions (I list two specific ones below the fold).

The first question concerns the advance reading. I'm slated to give lectures on the topic of authenticity from a philosophical perspective. A cool topic, no doubt, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a suitable short advance reading for students of this age to tackle. Does anyone have any ideas? Really anything will do - it will be pretty easy to construct a good discussion about the key themes on this topic starting from pretty much any advance reading source. I just can't think of any good sources! It doesn't have to be straight philosophy - could be anything, an editorial, a comic book, a short story, it doesn't matter. As long as it sets up the basic issue.

The second question concerns approach. These are 7th and 8th grade students. I've never worked with this age group. How would you approach a philosophical discussion with 7th and 8th graders? I have a 90 minute time slot to play with (I'll be giving the same talk/discussion four times, once with each boy/girl group from the two age groups), so time really isn't an issue (if anything, I might have too much of it!).

Of course, I'd be happy to hear any suggestions or thoughts you might have on those two specific questions, or anything else on the general topic.

Reading Student E-Mails

Now that my long sabbatical is effectively over (sigh), it’s time to start thinking about school again and about issues that haven’t crossed my mind in a while. As I was putting together my syllabi, one of them struck me: the issue of how to write a proper email to a professor. Perhaps it’s just me, but I get the distinct impression that with respect to emails the writing skills of many of my students has degraded to an almost embarrassing level. The problem is so bad at times that I keep reminding myself to put some policy about it into my syllabus, but I never get around to doing it (which is why I thought of it while crafting a syllabus). The main reason it never makes it into the syllabus is that I’m not convinced yet that this is just a personal problem that I have with email correspondence, or if this is really a problem that lots of people see and think needs to be addressed. Moreover, I’m not sure it’s my job to combat it.

If you are a professor, you know what I’m talking about. Over the years I have received more and more emails that look like this:

——-#1 ———-

Hey

Where’s the assignment for this week

———————

OR

—–#2 ———–

Panza

Where’s the assignment?

——————-

OR

—— #3 ———-

i prolly wont’ be ther today im sick

——————–

OR

—–#4 ———–

send me the paper assignment i wasn’t in class

——————-

I could go on and on, as there are endless versions of these things. I’m sure many of you have favorite versions or pet peeves. Some of the emails I get are just careless, and some are just rude. Overall, I think, the main problems that I see boil down to:

1. The addressee is not addressed at all, or is not properly addressed. If I’m addressed, it might be as “hey” or as “Panza”. Just to be clear: I don’t want to be called “Dr. Panza” – that’s not my beef. Actually I ask students to call me “CP” so that will do. My main issue here is that “hey” is far too informal (I’m your professor not your buddy) and “Panza” is rude (only my best friends call me that).

Although I’m not a stickler for hierarchy, this _is_ a student/teacher relationship, and a properly composed email really should have an addressee. This doesn’t mean that our relationship can’t be somewhat informal, because it can be (mine often are). However, “hey” or “Panza” come off as rude (though I don’t think it is intended to come off this way most times). Ways of composing an email to a friend don’t immediately carry over to the ways you can speak to a professor, even one you know well or one that you goof around with to some degree.

2. The email is not signed. Why not?

3. The email uses no proper capitalization and is full of spelling errors or IM speak. Again, this is not an email to your friend, so “prolly” and “coulpa” and other such words should actually be spelled out. Frankly, a badly composed email at this level gives off a very bad impression about you, your intelligence level, and your character (it says that you are disrespectful, lazy, etc.). Why would you do that?

4. The email demands things without the required softening language. “I need X” or “Get me X” is not appropriate way to talk in a student to teacher email. Something like “Could you send me X?” is perfectly appropriate, sends the same message, and maintains a respectful tone.

5. There is no subject line in the email at all. This is a basic courtesy. People get lots of emails, and often need to prioritize which ones get read when. Besides, I like to know what it’s about before I open it.

6. The email has an attachment inside with no subject line and with no writing in it at all. Something like “CP, here’s my paper. Thanks, Poindexter” will do.

It all boils down to a few things for me.

a) If you don’t know the person well on a friendly non-formal level, then you should write an email the same way you would actually type a letter that you would print and send in the mail (not that this happens anymore!). Moreover, you should type that letter remembering that this is a form of communication like any other – and so it says something about you. It leaves an impression. If you were talking to your boss at work, you wouldn’t slur your words or use IM speak or say “hey” or call your boss by her last name only or say “get me X”.

b) A teacher-student relationship requires _some_ level of respect going up and down. Much as it offends sensitive ears raised in the “consumer model” culture, the teacher/student relationship _is_ a hierarchical relationship – I know more than you do about this subject, and I’m going to teach you that material. But for that relationship to work right requires respect on both sides, even if that respect has different rituals depending on the role you are in (student or teacher). I will always be respectful to you, so be respectful to me. Communication (in class, in office, and email) counts.

I’m also worried, to be honest, that these students will graduate thinking that this way of conducting a virtual email exchange is okay, and then will be embarrassed in the workplace (or worse yet, never know that they’ve created a sloppy impression of who they are for others to take away from such exchanges).

Do we instructors have a responsibility to stop students from writing emails like this – to at least make it clear that it is unacceptable? If so, how do we put that into practice?

Of course, it is also very possible that I shouldn’t be worked up about this at all. It could be that bosses come from the IM culture too, so they don’t care. Soon enough, professors will email students and other people the same way. So it could be that the offense I take from these emails is an artifact of me being brought up in a non-internet world when I was their age. As a consequence, acceptable written communication, for me, has a different set of rituals. Is that right?

Should I lighten up, or is this really a growing problem that needs to be addressed?

Making Asian Studies (More) Interdisciplinary

One of my many projects over sabbatical was to rethink my Asian Ethics course. The main population of this course consists not of philosophy majors (though they enroll too, but I teach a more specific and directed course for them), but rather two main groups of students: first, and foremost, those seeking to fulfill the Ethics component of our general education requirements at my university and secondly, students enrolled in Asian studies.

A major source of weakness in the course before, as I saw it, was that it focused a bit too heavily just on seeing texts from a philosophical point of view. Students enjoyed the course, but I personally found it a bit stiff. I felt that students didn’t really come away appreciating the Asian component as much as they could have. Instead, they got a course in ethics using Asian texts. To fix this, I though, I needed to make the course more interdisciplinary. So I’ve made some changes. Not huge ones, but I’ve made a start.

The major alteration in the syllabus is the inclusion of guest speakers. I invited six professors to come and speak to the class on a variety of topics (I tried to insert the acctual schedule for the semester, but Blogspot can't handle it -- so I'll just point out that we cover these major texts, first Analects, then Dhammapada, then Bhagavad Gita, then Tao Te Ching, then Zhuangzi, with some other smaller authors put in here and there. If you'd like to see the schedule more specifically and how the course is laid out, see my reproduced post at my own blog, here, where the semester scheduled readings table came out fine in the post: http://akuindeed.com/?p=2018)

In any event, with respect to each talk, here’s what I was envisioning:

1. History talk: students reading the Analects (and the Tao Te Ching, later on) need to have some appreciation and understanding of the specific challenges (understood in a variety of ways) that existed for people living in pre-Qin China.

2. Meditation talk: this interactive session on Buddhist meditation techniques (students are expected to actually do the techniques in class) occurs right after reading about it and studying its importance in Dhammapada. Reading about meditation and its uses is one thing, doing it is another!

3. Psychology talk: the point here was to show students that ancient Confucian thought is not dead, or confined to the ancient Chinese world. Can key Confucian beliefs and ways of thinking be seen in modern China? If so, how would you set up psychological experiments to test for the presence of Confucian thinking? Also here some emphasis on how these results might affect modern concerns (for instance, cross-cultural discussions of human rights) will be highlighted.

4. Literature talk: anyone who teaches Asian texts cannot help but admit that there are obvious literary dimensions to these works; as such, dissecting them simply from a philosophical point of view is short sighted. Specifically, this talk will focus on the beauty of reading Zhuangzi from a literary perspective.

5. Art talk: when trying to think about what (if any) differences exist between “western” and “eastern” ways of thinking about the world (or differences between various “eastern” ways of thinking), looking at art can be revealing. The ways that the artist comes at the work and develops it reveals a lot about his/her conceptual presuppositions. This talk would highlight some of those possible ways of approaching Asian artwork.

6. Calligraphy talk: my hope here was that, in starting the Tao Te Ching, students would come to feel the Chinese language by trying to work on writing the characters themselves. In the class, we focus for a day on the first poem of the TTC, so in this class the hope is that students can learn to appreciate Chinese philosophy even more by having an actual experience in trying to see what goes into actually writing it (they would focus on the first line of the TTC, which has few characters.

----

In trying to make Asian studies (in this case Asian Ethics) more interdisciplinary, I’ve started at the ground floor, obviously – spicing up the semester with talks from people with expertise in Asian studies from other areas. Of course, a more ambitious effort would go much further than this in trying to make such courses truly interdisciplinary. It’s a big task, however.

If anyone is willing to leave their thoughts, I’m curious about (a) what your thoughts are about this current attempt I am trying out this semester (on any level – for example, any other possible talks you would try to include, in an ideal world? An obvious glaring problem in this schedule is the lack of talks about India, but this was more of a scheduling problem with the professor I was hoping to bring in). But also (b): how could the project of making courses like this one more interdisciplinary be conducted in an even bolder and far more innovative and ambitious way?

When Conflicts Arise in Teaching

ISWers:

A student of mine (a philosophy major) recently graduated and took a job teaching English for a year in South Korea. He is keeping a blog about his personal and pedagogical experiences and trying his best to analyze and understand them from a cross-cultural perspective (his main interests as a student lie in Asian philosophy). He put a post up today on his blog that I'm sure will be of interest to folks here. With his permission, I'm reproducing his post -- and the dilemma he poses for educators who are schooled in ethical theory -- below.

I have always held a particular fondness for the theoretical side of ethics: sitting in my ivory tower of philosophy and thinking about train-switches and bizzaro-Hitlers in parallel-worlds.

This week I found myself in a very obvious real-life moral dilemma, and although I firmly believe our moral selves don't just "swing in" at the point when when we need them to (morality as a way of life, not something that just happens here and there, occasionally), I did see a clear-cut difference between the situation at hand than the situations I find myself in everyday.

This is an interesting topic for all teachers and ivory-tower theorists-- the situation I found myself in really calls into question several different aspects: child abuse, suicide rates, cultural norms, personal duty and relational identity. Interested?

First, let me explain the situation itself. Before heading to class to teach on Friday, I ran into one of my students waiting for the elevator. I asked him how he was, to which he replied "Not good. I am afraid of the speaking test." As you can probably infer, I was to administer a test in order to determine the students' progress on their English speaking ability. I told him not to worry, the test was short and quite simple, and that I would see him in an hour.

As I entered the class an hour later I saw the student again. The student was clearly uncomfortable, sweating profusely and looking quite anxious. This concerned me, as this particular student is usually one that I get along with quite easily, and that I consider to be one of my brighter students. This student has never had a problem approaching me for any reason. Today was different though. Again, the student said he was afraid of the test. I reassured him, and began taking students out to the hall one-by-one in order to ask them a few simple questions and give them grades. The grades would later be entered into our website, where parents can easily check students' progress.

The student in question did very well on the test, and I told him so again, reassuring him as best I could. Within a few moments after the test, he regained his composure and looked much more relaxed. This is when he said "If I don't do well on the speaking test, my mother hits me." I didn't really know what to make of this comment, what truth was behind such a statement, and what exactly to do. I told him again he did very well on the test, and told him not to worry, his mother would be proud of him. These were all completely true statements.

My question is this: in the future, how will I balance my duty as a teacher to reflect the student's proficiency accurately in grades, knowing that this student may face abuse at home if I grade to harshly?

Conflict of interest, you can be sure.

Now for some background information: Students in South Korea face extremely stressful lives. They are in school or academy (private school) year round, and are tested every step of the way. Tests determine eligibility for middle school, high school, university and job-placement. The only way to assure a decent income later in life is to study and test well. Students are pressured to succeed by their teachers, their peers and their families.

Furthermore, South Korea boasts one of the highest suicide rates in the world. The youth are well aware of this problem. I've had more than a couple of my students mention the stress and suicide rates in their weekly writings.

Culturally (based on what I've seen in public, so far), the standard Confucian parent-child relationship is in play and bound to a fair degree of physical discipline--hitting, spanking, and so forth. Of course, this is completely circumstantial, and I have no idea what my student experiences when he gets home. This is almost a separate topic altogether.

The fact of the matter is that my situation is a false dilemma. I have no choice at all-I have to pad grades. As an English "teacher," I'm more of an English "presence" than anything else. Yes, I go through lessons, and the kids do learn. In the grand scheme of things, however, the grades I give mean nothing.

So, for you ivory tower theorists, lets alter this thought experiment a bit. What would you do if you had a choice? Is padding the grades to save the student's skin a wise decision? Or should you hold up your duty as a teacher and honestly reflect the skills of those you are testing? That is, do you worry about the circumstances at home when factoring grades?

Offensive and Defensive Argumentation

Patrick Appel (and others) here seems to make an amazing discovery: yes, the philosophical method actually makes sense and is worth using! Instead of changing positions in argument only when your opponent has defeated elements of your own position, you should actively seek out to create better arguments for your opponent, utilizing a strong principle of charity, and in the process learn things that lead you to alter your own position. Of course, many students would not agree.

When I teach the method in this way, I always have students who question it. They look at me, almost stunned, and want to know why in the world a person should create a better argument for their opponent. Isn’t that the opponent’s job? This way of viewing arguments is, as Appel and others note, entirely defensive.

However, there's more to it. The defensive strategy views the argument, and the thinking behind it, as complete. As a result, there’s nothing more for the holder of the argument to learn. All that remains is the job of occasional defense and the need to adjust the argument when one’s opponent is successful. The contrary method (call it the offensive strategy) sees one’s position as essentially incomplete and so constantly under development. As a result, it doesn’t adjust only in defense. It adjusts as it seeks out its opposition and creates better arguments for the opposition position.

Perhaps for some (students and others) committed to the defensive strategy, all that exists is rhetoric, dogma and arrogance. Argument is a zero-sum game of winners and losers competing for finite goods. With the offensive strategy, participants are motivated by truth, greater understanding and humility. Argument is not zero-sum, and the goods of the practice are available to both sides in the exchange.

I'm wondering what reactions people here at ISW have about this. Do you teach the offensive strategy yourself? How do you teach it? How do you frame the worth of this approach? Do you find from time to time that you, against your better instincts, reward defensive strategy thinking in students (I know I do)? What do your students say to the offensive strategy? How do they view the function of good argumentation?

Teaching Experimental Philosophy (Presentation Call)

I received an email from Jonathan Philips wondering if we could post a call for presentations on the subject of teaching Experimental Philosophy (for the Pacific APA). If you are interested, see below the fold.

The APA Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy invites abstracts for a special session on teaching with experimental philosophy to be held at the 84th meeting of the Pacific Division of the APA in San Francisco, CA. The three-hour session will include four presentations, each 30 minutes in length. Presentations in all areas of experimental (and empirical) philosophy are welcome, and interactive presentations (as opposed to read papers) are particularly encouraged. Topics might include: teaching thought experiments with “clickers;” introduction to philosophy through experimental philosophy; case studies on the teaching of particular experimental philosophy articles; the tradeoff between philosophical and scientific depth when creating syllabi, for example, in the philosophy of mind; and resistance to the incorporation of experimental philosophy into the curriculum; among other topics. Presenters must be APA members by the meeting date.

Jonathan sent me a PDF to go along with the post, but I can't figure out how to get it up on Blogger (Go Wordpress!). In any case, if you are interested, I'm sure Jonathan would be glad to email it to you. His email address is phillipsjonathans@gmail.com

When (Chinese) Parents Cheat

I posted this up at my own blog, but I figured it might fit well here too. My wife and I have two undergraduate Tsinghua students from China staying with us for the weekend until they start school for the year at my college (Drury). Last night we got into an interesting discussion about the Chinese gaokao. For those of you who don’t know what that is: the gaokao is the national college entrance examination in China. Unlike the SAT here in the US, the gaokao almost single handedly decides (a) whether you go to college and (b) where you can go to college. So the pressure to do well on the gaokao is intense. Last night we talked about a fraud case involving the gaokao that apparently became a hot topic among mainland Chinese students.

Here’s the story (I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the details, here, of course): last year a student took the gaokao and was scored as the top student in China. However, this scoring involved the fact that the student received an extra 10 points on the exam because he was a minority (there’s affirmative action component in total gaokao scoring). Interestingly enough, it’s not the affirmative action angle that is so controversial – this part is more or less accepted as non-problematic (I remember actually discussing this aspect of the gaokao with my students while teaching in China, and only a tiny few thought that minorities shouldn’t be given extra points in this way).

Instead, the real problem was elsewhere. Apparently it turned out that this student was not really a minority. His parents lied, and had been lying about the child’s ethic background for years (possibly with the inevitable gaokao advantage in mind). The child, mind you, did not know what his parents did -- he was in the dark about his own ethnicity. The Chinese officials found out, and took away his 10 points.

Fair enough. Nothing controversial there. Here’s the kicker, though: although the student’s score – even after the 10 points were taken away – was high enough for the student to be scored as one of the of the top students in China (and so could still easily attend any top school such as Tsinghua, Beijing University, or Fudan), no top school would enroll him. They refused to let him in. This is what got the Chinese students riled up. The issue: how far does responsibility and punishment extend? My guests thought that it was horribly unfair to punish the child for what were the sins of his parents. After all, he didn’t even know. However, on the other hand, the argument was made that if the colleges had accepted him there would have been no little reason for other parents not to try and repeat the fraud If the only consequence of being caught for cheating in this way was that you might have the extra points deducted (and a little shame), the risk/reward ratio for parental cheating would be tilted heavily in the direction of fraud.

At bottom, the thinking of the colleges is clear: to maintain the authenticity of the gaokao, and the integrity of the system as a whole, they felt that they should punish this student so severely in the hopes that other parents would not even think of committing this fraud. Whether the child knows or doesn't know about it would constitute no defense.

There are a lot of interesting dimensions here. The immediate question is whether the colleges were right to refuse the student admission. Another question might be whether there are cross-cutltural aspects to this issue: what would American universities do in such a case? What should they do?

Any thoughts?

Laowai Philosophizing

Hi everyone, this post isn't really from me, but from Chris Panza who is teaching this semester in China and can't get to Blogger through the Great Firewall. He'd posted it to his blog here, but he thought it might make for a good teaching post as well.

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Sadly, my (our) time in Beijing is slowly coming to a close (we leave in July). This is not something that I or my wife are particularly happy about – both of us feel as if we are, just recently, beginning to get our “sea legs” (so to speak) in Chinese culture. The quickly approaching end of the experience has led me to reflect a bit on what I’ve experienced already, especially with respect to teaching and thinking about Chinese Philosophy while here. There are a lot of subjects I plan to talk about in the future on this topic, but the one I’d like to discuss right now concerns the very general issue of doing Chinese Philosophy in China.

In planning for and looking forward to this trip, one of the things I was most excited about was the prospect of interacting with Chinese on the subject of pre-Qin philosophy. After all, I’ve only spoken to American students about it, and with American scholars. So I was eager to talk about these subjects with people who grew up in the same culture that emerged from those very thinkers I was studying.
Although I would have hoped for even more interaction in this way, there’s still a lot to talk about here. Let me start in a simple place: the reception that I received as someone studying/teaching Chinese Philosophy here in China. Before recording my impressions, I should put out a rather large caveat: my data set here is small. Vanishingly so, as a matter of fact; still, my experience is what it is, and it is formed regardless of the paucity of my data “points”. So I’ll just talk about the experience and let the reader take it with the grain of salt that is appropriate.
My general impression is that my reception by others (Chinese) can be split into two large categories – with one group of people generally approving, an another one not. Each group is a big umbrella, housing different reactions that can be thought of as “positive” or “negative”. I’ll briefly describe the two:
A. The Negative Group.
One “group” of Chinese that I meet seemed surprised, shocked, perplexed, and sometimes annoyed, that I would be teaching Chinese Philosophy here in China. To unify the whole group, however, I always found myself getting the same response from others — upon my saying that this is what I was doing here, the reaction was something like, “Huh? You are teaching Chinese Philosophy here?”
How should this be interpreted? What were they thinking when they said “you”? I’ve come away thinking that there are some different ways to interpret it.
a) The “I don’t teach in Chinese, and I read the texts in translation” problem. There is no doubt that some of the more negative interactions were based on these facts. This is understandable to some degree – if a student was studying Joyce’s Ulysses in Mandarin, I’d probably think that was odd too. That said, I did have a few students mention to me (who would read the Analects in Mandarin alongside my discussing it from translation) that they felt that the interaction with translation helped them to better understand what was going on in the original. That’s interesting, though my own grasp of ancient Chinese is not good enough to comment on the observation. Surely a controversial thing to say, however!
b) The ”I’m not Chinese (or at least Asian)” issue. I’d hate to think that this fact meant anything to anyone, but I can’t help but to think that this did bother some people. More times than not, when I would get the “you are teaching what?” reaction, it was from people who had no idea how good my skills in reading Chinese were (or speaking it for that matter, other than the fact that we were talking in English, though that wouldn’t necessarily indicate anything in this environment). This led me to think that the descriptor for the term “you” was “laowai” (foreigner). In the beginning, I thought perhaps I was getting the impression wrong, but after a while I started to feel as if some had a negative reaction to the fact that I – as a Westerner – was teaching the subject at a Chinese university (irrespective of language ability).
Sometimes it seemed as if there might be two different things going on:
B1) At times I got the impression that it was a “what could a laowai really know about this?” reaction. When I got that impression, I would think to myself “would I feel the same way about a Chinese teaching Melville?” I found my own internal reactions to be conflicting. On the one hand, a quick internal reaction said “yes” – what could a Chinese know about the distinctively Western challenges that Melville is dealing with? On the other hand, my more thought out cognitive reactions would then step in and say “no” – that it was silly to think such a thing. A Chinese can read Moby Dick and understand it just as well as someone from Melville, New York (I used to work there, by the way — gratuitous trivia there).
B2) At other times, the reaction I got felt more like the person I was talking to was insulted, like “even if a laowai could know about this, Chinese should teach it.” I’m certain here that if I were convinced that a Chinese could understand Moby Dick as well as anyone, that I wouldn’t care at all whether an American (or specifically someone from Long Island!) taught it. This one I can’t really figure out at all, if I read the impression right. I would hope that in these interactions, I was misreading the situation. But perhaps not.
B3) Third, some people innocently seemed to be genuinely perplexed. Why would this tall Western guy with the thick American accent care about Chinese Philosophy anyway?
Lots of difficult questions and issues here, I think, for anyone teaching/reading/learning about Chinese Philosophy (or any text read in a cross-cultural forum and context, for that matter). Of course, and once again, I might have misread these reactions, so I’m not sure how much stock to put into my own impressions. Still, I did feel them, whether they were veridical or not.
B. The Positive Group
I received just as many, if not more, positive reactions. They too fell into a number of groups, some overlapping.
C1) I definitely got the impression that some were genuinely excited that a Westerner would be so interested in their own culture and philosophy. I felt a genuine sense of pride from some people that a laowai would show such interest in a heritage that they clearly had a great pride for. Here I experienced a bit of a “good for you!” reaction.
C2) Some people simply thought (in conjunction with C1) that it was just great that Westerners and Easterners could talk about something like this, with the hope of forming a kind of “common language” to address common concerns and problems.
C3) Perhaps most controversially, the most common positive reaction I received pointed to a belief that Chinese texts (especially the Confucian ones) had been misinterpreted or misappropriated by this-or-that specific interest group through Chinese history. These interest groups differed – some thought of political groups (both ancient and contemporary) whereas other pointed to their own parents. People who fell into this group were genuinely excited by the idea of discussing these texts in a different context, without the assumption that those interpretations were obviously right.
Some people (in discussion) were genuinely intrigued by my own readings of the texts (Confucian, specifically). Some even indicated that whereas in the past they had had no interest at all in the works, they now saw that they “spoke” to their own concerns in life. Here, I need to be careful: I’m not suggesting here that “the Westerner” came in and saved Confucius from the Confucians (to bite an old Roger Ames article title). I think it was rather that they were simply happy to have someone read the texts in a way that didn’t simply seem to serve the interests of the group giving the interpretation. Some felt that Confucius had been used by parents to “control” them, make them feel bad, or whatever, and there were similar concerns that political powers-that-be had done the same in the past.

On this score – whether I was Western or not, and whether my readings were even accurate – I felt a genuine desire from some people to reconnect with these texts in new ways, as a way of “freeing them” from what they took to be strictly enforced (and wrong or at least rigid) historical interpretations. A few even found a new reason to be self-critical of their own particular way of engaging in their relational environments!

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Positive and negative reactions taken together, this has been a great experience. I wish it could have been longer. I myself (well, my wife too, as she agrees) could easily stay here a few years. I, for one, know that what I could learn about Chinese culture, or even just Chinese thoughts about their own heritage and philosophy, just barely scratched some superficial surface. On one level, this is deeply frustrating, as I realize just how little I really know. On the other hand, I realize that I knew nothing before, so at least I’ve had the opportunity to engage in even this amount of superficial cultural interaction.