The Character Experiment

During the Spring 2015 semester in my introductory ethics courses, I tried something new that I first heard about through my friend Russell DiSilvestro. I suspect this assignment will sound strange to many philosophy professors. I asked the students to complete a project, “The Character Experiment,” in which they would pick 3 virtues to attempt to cultivate over the course of the semester.

“The purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would be of no benefit to us.”
-Aristotle 

Prior to describing and giving them the assignment, we read Greg Bassham’s “Virtue-Centered Approaches to Education: Prospects and Pitfalls,” Virtues in Action, Michael W. Austin, ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 11-22. This set the stage and offered a rationale for completing this type of experiment, recognizing some of its potential strengths and weaknesses. We also read James Gould, “Becoming Good: The Role of Spiritual Practice,” Philosophical Practice 1, no. 3 (2005): 135–47, to offer a framework and some practical suggestions. And we discussed the relevance of the experiment to the theories and issues we studied over the course of the semester.

Essay Question Formats

I've noticed that students at the introductory level seem to have a greater tendency to fail to address one element of a multi-part essay question (usually the last part of the question). For example, I often ask them to evaluate an argument, or give and briefly defend their own view on a subject. Before the first exam I emphasize that they need to address all aspects of a question, and even if they aren't sure what they think, that they should nevertheless write something down for partial credit. Still, many fail to do so.  I've recently noticed a difference in terms of how much this occurs, based on how I format the question.

For example, I had a significant number of students neglect to answer the last part of the following question on a recent introductory ethics exam:

Explan two of the ways that military training morally harms soldiers, according to Francis Trivigno in his chapter "A Virtue Ethical Case for Pacifism." Briefly explain one objection to his view.

With respect to the following question, there was only one case of a student ignoring the last question:

From the chapter by Stan van Hooft, "Sex, Temperance, and Virtue":

• Describe the distinct virtue he believes is important in the sexual realm of life that is overlooked by those who focus on temperance.
• Second, which philosophical account of sex does his view reflect, and why?
• Finally, do you think his view is correct? Briefly explain.

My working hypothesis is that they are used to having information, including questions, presented to them in bullet-point style, and so they are more likely to miss a part of the question when it is not formatted in this way. I am curious if anyone else has thoughts about this issue or their own anecdotal evidence for or against my working hypothesis. If the second format is clearer to my students, then in my context it strikes me that I should present the question in a manner that they are more likely to attend to in full.

On Assessment

Philosopher Steven Hales recently published an article at the website of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Who's Assessing the Assessors' Assessors?" There is much worth thinking about here. In my experience, most faculty find outcomes assessment to be at best tedious, and are suspicious of the need, methodology, and even the motives for it. According to Hales, this sort of assessment is an "epistemological quagmire," and concludes that "the mavens of outcomes assessment do exactly the wrong thing—they pretend to have some other method that is the royal road to truth when, prey to the same doubts, it is no more than the path to ignorance."

I think the philosophical points raised by Hales are compelling, though it is the case that at least some faculty do not grade in such a manner that can be characterized as an accurate assessment of the work and progress made by a student over the course of the semester relative to the course objectives. It seems pretty clear that outcomes assessment is here to stay, such that relying on grades given by faculty will not stand alone as a method of assessment. However, Hales has offered a strong case that outcomes assessment over and above course grades is deeply problematic.

Higgins' Good Life of Teaching: Arendt's Phenomenology of Practical Life

 In this post, I will almost exclusively describe rather than evaluate the content of the chapter, as it primarily is intended to lay the groundwork for a discussion of teaching in a later portion of the book. However, the end result of this discussion for Higgins is that a framework is provided which will help to construct a virtue ethics for the professions, connecting work with fundamental human needs and aspirations, as well as helping us to realize how we are shaped by our work practices.

In contrast to MacIntyre, Hannah Arendt hierarchically divides practical activities into the categories of labour, work, and action. Higgins notes that a discussion of teaching with respect to these categories will be addressed in chapter 7 of the book. In the present chapter, the aim is to reconstruct Arendt's account of seeking flourishing in the practical realm so that we may understand "how the practical life may comprise and compromise our search for a fully human existence" (p. 87).  Broadly speaking, Arendt argues that in the past, humans (some, at least) were torn between the contemplative life and the active life, or between vita contemplativa and vita activa . However, human life is now reduced to labour and the scientific/technological pursuits needed to assist labour.

Labour is required because we are embodied beings.  Much of what we do to feed ourselves falls in this category. The repetitive cycle of acquiring food, preparing food, eating food, and cleaning up, all done because of our biological need for food, is a clear example of labour. Work includes such things as tool-making, framing a house, designing a house, and building a chair. It is often engaged in to lighten our labour, though it creates more labour in the form of maintaining our homes, tools, and chairs. An architect and a construction worker are both examples of work, for Arendt. Action is an important though difficult concept, as Arendt employs it; it is also the "sine qua non of leading a fully human life" (p.101). In order to clarify this category, Higgins uses "deed", and explains it as something which contains meaning, is in some sense theatrical, and possesses singularity. The examples given are Jackie Robinson's taking the field for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947 and a juror convincing other members that they have overlooked an important piece of evidence. The former communicates without explicit speech, the latter is not mere words but also rectifies a potential injustice. Two general categories of deeds are promising and forgiving. We cannot predict the outcome of deeds in advance, nor can we predict that we will have the opportunity to perform a deed. Lastly, deeds are self-disclosing. They come from who we are, as individuals in a community. And they yield meaning for us and are connected to ends which we pursue for their own sake.

In the last section of the chapter, Higgins explores what all of this has to do with his construction of a eudaimonistic professional ethics. Arendt, however, never gives an example of a job or occupation that falls into the category of action. For her, every activity occurs in only one mode, either labour, or work, or action. Higgins offers two amendments which he takes to strengthen the account (and I agree). First, he states that some activities fall in all 3 of these categories. A chef at an excellent restaurant, will, in her occupation, engage in activities which fall in each of these categories. (This seems to me to be the case with teaching, but we'll see how Higgins deals with this in chapter 7.) The second amendment is that occupational activities are not merely social, they also possess an openness to others. We shape and are shaped by each of these 3 modes of practical life.

I must confess that it isn't entirely clear to me what the full content and significance of this second amendment to Arendt is supposed to be--so any help in the discussion would be much appreciated! Other than that, I look forward to how Higgins will situate teaching within the framework discussed and modified in this chapter of The Good Life of Teaching.

Help with Thought Experiments

In my experience, it is initially difficult to get students to see the validity of using thought experiments in philosophy. For example, in my ethics courses we discuss the argument from analogy Peter Singer uses to help make the case that we are obligated to donate to famine relief, comparing the costs and benefits of saving a drowning child with those of saving the starving child. Usually some student will try to change the parameters of the experiment. For example, after saving the child a student stated that he would simply ask the child's parents to reimburse him for the cost of his clothes that were ruined by going into the shallow pond to save the child.

One thing I now do to motivate thought experiments and get students to "follow the rules" is compare them to the type of experiments a physicist or chemist might do in the lab. A scientist sets up certain conditions in order to explore reality, test a hypothesis, and so on. In order to get the right data and draw sound conclusions, she will set certain boundaries and engage in particular procedures. Similarly, when we engage in thought experiments we limit options available to agents in the experiment and set up certain rules in order to clarify a concept or test a philosophical theory, even if in so doing we are not talking about something that is likely to happen in "real life".

I'm curious if others have found additional ways to deal with problems in using thought experiments in the philosophy classroom. If you have some helpful tips, please share them in the comments.

Finally, for help on teaching the content of some thought experiments, see these 60 second videos from the Open University. Perhaps a video representation will also help students respect the parameters set up by the experiment.

The Quotable Teacher, installment 10

"The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists." 

-William James

The Value of the Delivery

I've been thinking some lately about the importance of the quality of public speaking as it relates to teaching. While teaching is not like delivering a speech at a political rally or pumping up a team before a big game, I take it that how we deliver material is obviously an important component of good teaching. I have one thought to offer here, and some questions to raise.

First, my thought. I know of some professors who play loud music right before class to get themselves pumped up and ready for "the show". I am not the kind of professor or speaker who puts on a show for the class or audience. One reason for this is that this is simply not my personality. When we try to be something we are not, the lack of authenticity may be apparent and serve to hinder good teaching. At least this is so in my own case. Another reason I don't try to put on a show is that I think the centerpiece of the classroom should be the ideas we are discussing, rather than the professor or the students. I still try to deliver my material with clarity, and to avoid being boring as a speaker, but I'm not a coach on Friday night getting his players pumped up, and I don't try to be.

Now, for my questions:
1. What constitutes a good delivery, and how can we develop this skill as philosophy teachers?
2. Is there a set of speaking virtues that the ideal philosophy professor instantiates, apart from clarity?

Academically Adrift Part 2: The Moral Function of the University

One of my initial responses to Academically Adrift (AA) was a form of despair. It is the feeling I’ve had at times in the classroom as 30 faces stare back at me (or at the ground, or at the cell phone they’re trying to hide under their desk) when I ask a question about the assigned reading, and it appears that at best a handful of students have even attempted to do that reading. It is tempting to become cynical, or bitter, or to simply throw up our hands in resignation. But if we desire to pursue excellence as philosophy teachers, we need to overcome these temptations. And one way to do that is to take on what seems like an even more monumental task than encouraging students to work—we may need to attempt to help our students become better human beings.

If Aristotle was right that one’s childhood is very important with respect to the task of embodying virtue as an adult, then some of the points raised in AA paint a bleak picture. Students who come to college primarily for a social experience and career credential may not see the value in grappling with difficult ideas and concepts, reading at least 40 pages a week and writing longer papers. Why undergo the sometimes painful and often difficult process of developing intellectual virtue when the point of college is to obtain a credential and have some fun? If all of the involved parties are supporting this approach, to varying extents, it will be that much more difficult to change the mind of the student to the extent that he or she engages in the necessary behavior for growth in intellectual virtue and critical thinking skills.

There are other issues in play here, as the authors of AA point out. Many PhD’s see themselves as independent professionals and are not concerned with advancing any particular institution, i.e. there is a lack of institutional loyalty which can be problematic. Related to this, according to Arum and Roksa a primary incentive driving faculty research “is a quasi-religious commitment to embracing research as a ‘vocational calling’" (Kindle location 289). The motive is not financial reward, at least for many and perhaps for most faculty. Clearly this is the case for philosophers, as our work very rarely populates any best-seller list. Perhaps we ought to take teaching to be a part of this calling as well. I won’t pursue this more here, given a previous discussion at ISW.

A Psychological Cause of Grade Inflation?

Yesterday, my colleague Matt Pianalto and I were having a brief discussion in the hallway about grading. Something I've wondered about in the past, and which we discussed, is whether a particular psychological cause sometimes contributes to grade inflation.

Technology, Values, and the Value of the Humanities

I'm teaching an upper-level course this semester entitled Technology and Values. Today in class we began a discussion of some of the values embedded in technology, based on a piece by Langdon Winner entitled "Artifacts/Ideas and Political Culture."*  Briefly, one of his arguments is that some contemporary technology contains anti-democratic values, including the centralization of power, a view of the world as hierarchically structured, the unequal distribution of goods, and the assumption that men and women have different competencies.  For example, some information technologies eliminate certain places of community life; computer technologies can undermine privacy and freedom; and some systems of manufacturing seek control at the expense of human initiative and creativity.  Without going into the details of the argument, the claim is that these values conflict with democratic values such as freedom, justice, equality, and self-government.

What strikes me as quite relevant for teachers of philosophy who are also concerned with the state and role of the humanities is one of Winner's proposed solutions. He offers three "guiding maxims" intended to help us talk in more meaningful and comprehensive ways about technology and its impact on political culture, rather than merely allowing values such as productivity and efficiency to trump everything else. One of those maxims is No engineering without political deliberation. When a proposed technological project is under discussion, it "should be closely examined to reveal the covert political conditions and artifact/ideas" its production would entail. Because of this, he argues that the education of engineers should equip them "to evaluate political contexts, political ideas, political arguments, and political consequences involved in their work."  The goal is to find ways to extend values such as freedom and social justice into the structure of technology and technology-related public policy, rather than acquiescing to the default market values of efficiency and productivity.

Given the role of technology in society, and the amount of attention it receives, one way to underscore the importance of the humanities is to discuss the human, social, and political values that particular technologies foster and hinder. Then--when the myth of the value-neutrality of technology is exposed--show the need for not only engineers but others involved in designing, building, and distributing technological artifacts to consider the types of value issues that those of us in the humanities are concerned about and equipped to teach. This is another way to make the case for the importance and value of the humanities which connects in direct ways with our daily individual and social lives, and is therefore likely to be seen by some others as part of a sound case for the value of the humanities.

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*Society, Ethics, and Technology, edited by Morton Winston and Ralph Edelbach

Professorial Stereotypes

From an interesting short piece by Christine Overall (HT Samantha Brennan):

 I conclude that we have a responsibility to inform people about our work and clarify what professors do. This means making our professional lives more visible to our students and to non-academics. We can demystify our research by discussing it in our classes, publicizing our results through the popular media, and bringing our expertise to bear upon current debates in newspapers, magazines and blogs. We can talk with non-academic friends, family, neighbours and our own students about our teaching methods and goals, as well as about the support we need for enhancing what universities fondly call “the learning environment.” We can also inform students and the public about core values in the academy, such as shared governance, peer review and academic freedom, and how those values benefit the broader community.
If we think our work is valuable, productive and worth doing, then we ought to be telling people about it, rather than thinking our work is so profound as to be inaccessible to non-academics. And certainly not acquiescing in the cringe-worthy media image of professors.

 I wonder whether we should seek to do as she suggests, or just not worry about it? I tend to think we should try to undermine these stereotypes, as one way to underscore the value of philosophy in particular, and the humanities in general.

Undergraduate Philosophy and Religion CFP's

My colleague Matt Pianalto just started a blog that will compile calls for papers for philosophy and religion undergrads, for conferences, journals, and any other relevant events. You can check it out here.

Not for Profit, Episode 5: Beyond Mere Moral Education

In chapter 3 of her Not for Profit, Martha Nussbaum discusses the education of the moral and anti-moral emotions. She notes that Gandhi "understood very well that the political struggle for freedom and equality must first of all be a struggle within each person, as compassion and respect contend against fear, greed, and narcissistic aggression (p. 29)." Also, in the comments section of the first post in this series on Nussbaum's book, Michael Cholbi expressed this thought: "One topic I hope we might explore in this reading group is what pedagogically distinguishes humanistic education from 'mere' education in the humanities." In this post, I will offer some reflections on these related points.

Philosophy instructors are perhaps at their best constructing and analyzing arguments, offering objections, and raising doubts about philosophical positions. This is very important and is essential to an education in the humanities. As Nussbaum puts it, "Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior (p. 81)."  However, if this is all we do, then it seems to me that we have failed to advance from a mere education in the humanities to a humanistic education.

In my view, a humanistic education must not merely address how students think, though it must address that, but it must also engage the emotions and even the character of students. And my hunch is that this is something we (and I'm including myself here) are often not very skilled at doing. I must admit that when I seek to address the emotions of my students, or to encourage them to value and seek to acquire some particular virtue, I feel a little bit uncomfortable. Part of the challenge, I think, is to move beyond our comfort zones in this area and advocate certain human values discussed in Nussbaum's book such as respect, compassion, equality, and responsibility. Regarding this last value, I appreciated the following quotation from p. 54: "When people see their ideas as their own responsibility, they are more likely, too, to see their deeds as their own responsibility." A humanistic education will help students connect these two realms of life- their thoughts and their actions.

Here are some initial thoughts regarding how to go about humanistically educating students, drawn from Nussbaum's book as well as some of my own experiences:

1. We should encourage our students to engage in Socratic self-examination, not just about their beliefs, but about other aspects of their character as well (pp. 47-51).
2.  We should seek to develop the "narrative imagination" of our students. This includes cultivating sympathy and the ability to imagine what it might be like to be in another person's shoes who is very different from oneself (pp. 95-96). In a philosophy class this might include the reading of the right kind of fiction or history, or the viewing of an appropriate film. This engages students at an emotional level which may then reinforce what they are thinking about more abstractly in class. Most students don't get the emotional charge some of us do when reading Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, or _______ (insert favorite philosopher here)!
3.  From my experience, a deeper discussion of particular virtues can be an effective and enjoyable way to seek to accomplish some of the goals of a humanistic education. I've used White's Radical Virtues in the past to foster this sort of discussion. White's book also nicely includes a discussion between each virtue and some contemporary moral issue (courage--masculine ideal, pacifism; temperance--environmentalism; justice--social justice; compassion--animal liberation; wisdom--multiculturalism). I've found that discussing what it means to be courageous, wise, compassionate, temperate, and just to be better than a protracted discussion of the categorical imperative or social contract theory.
4. I've found that offering students a way to implement some of the material in their lives can be helpful. For example, when I teach Singer's argument that we're obligated to donate money to famine relief, most of my student are not yet convinced. However, I find that they are open to performing other actions, which I describe in class, such as visiting the Hunger Site; taking part in the ONE Campaign; or assisting the world's poor not by donating to Oxfam, but giving to Kiva.
5. As a final suggestion, the development of philosophy courses that include a service learning component might help accomplish the sort of education I'm discussing in this post, and which Nussbaum is advocating as well.

In closing, I am arguing that we need to take the following words from Aristotle to heart and begin to try to put them into action not just in the other humanistic disciplines, but also to some extent within philosophy: 

The purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good...otherwise the inquiry would be of no benefit.

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If readers are interested in offering some comments related to the above, perhaps specific pedagogical practices aimed at a humanistic education rather than a mere education in the humanities is a topic worth discussing. Or maybe a discussion of some more general questions might be helpful, such as: Should philosophy instructors (and others in the humanities) be seeking to foster certain moral virtues in their students? What are the advantages of this? The dangers? Why are we hesitant to do this? If we decide to do this, which values should we emphasize?

Moral Responsibilities of Professors as Professionals

During the past academic year, I participated in a professional learning community centered around faculty ethics. We read and discussed Rights and Wrongs in the College Classroom: Ethical Issues in Postsecondary Teaching, by Jordy Roucheleau (Philosophy) and Bruce Speck (English). The book is concerned with academic ethics in the classroom.

The book deals with a variety of ethical issues, including academic freedom, neutrality and advocacy in the classroom, grading, faculty-student relationships, conflicts of interest, and professional conduct. One thing that struck me as correct in the book is that the majority of responsibility for ensuring that faculty fulfill their responsibilities as teachers falls on the individual faculty member. But when someone is failing to fulfill their responsibilities, it is the professional obligation of others to address the issue. Such "self-policing" is one of the obligations we have in our professional role, and we would rather do this than grant oversight to administrators, legislatures, or the public, primarily because we are the experts in our field and know what it means to fulfill our professional responsibilities. As the authors put it in their conclusion:

Laws and university policies are not suitable means for addressing most ethical concerns in college teaching, such as the fairness of grades, the appropriateness of assignments, the amount of energy dedicated to course preparation, or the quality of faculty relationships with students...Because teaching does not lend itself to external regulation, instructors have a particular duty to observe ethical principles in their teaching (p. 169-170).

The problem is that many things are hinderances to the reflection and effort required to observe such principles. Heavy teaching loads, increased research demands, increased use of adjunct faculty, and other factors make this more difficult.

There are many things that can and should be done to help faculty fulfill their obligations. One that often arose in the context of our professional learning community was the need for faculty to address this personally and to take responsibility for helping one another deal with our deficiencies. All of the members of our community knew of cases (directly or indirectly) in which faculty were failing to fulfill their teaching obligations in an adequate manner. And many of these were going under the radar, so to speak.

Do readers (i) believe they have a professional responsibility to address cases in which other faculty members are failing to fulfill their classroom obligations?; and (ii) have suggestions for cultivating a commitment to ethical practices in the classroom on a campus?

ProfHacker

Readers of ISW might already be aware of this, but in case you aren't ProfHacker is a site which "delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education, Monday through Friday." A recent post, the End of Semester Checklist, has some good ideas for wrapping up the fall semester.

More on Thought Experiments in the Classroom

This issue has been addressed before on ISW, but I would like to raise it again. I find it difficult to get students to see the relevance of thought experiments, even the less esoteric ones such as Singer's drowning child analogy in his argument for famine relief. Even if they come along for the first part of the ride, when I start adjusting the drowning child case to handle their objections to the analogy between it and the starving child, I start to lose them.

David Boonin and Graham Oddie's applied ethics anthology has a helpful discussion of the role and relevance of thought experiments (specifically, arguments from analogy) in the introduction. They discuss how to understand such arguments, how to criticize them, and the technique of appealing to variant cases. I have found summarizing and explaining their points to be somewhat helpful, but I'm interested in how others motivate and justify this form of argument in applied ethics to students who seem skeptical of the method.

'On Course,' Part 6: Teaching with Small Groups

I consistently use small groups in my classes, but share some of the skepticism about their value alluded to by Lang at the beginning of the chapter. I have wondered whether there is much value in such work, and have seen the discomfort it produces for some students. In this chapter, Lang offers an argument in favor of the value of small groups, as well as some very useful practical advice related to this form of collaborative learning.


Lang offers three reasons in support of teaching with small groups. First, it helps prepare our students for their future careers. It is very likely that they will need the type of communication and interaction skills that are potentially developed in small group work. I think this is an important point. Given that the vast majority of our students (or at least my students) will not go to graduate school in philosophy or another discipline, it seems that we are obligated to help prepare them for what they will do after graduation. Second, Lang claims that there is research which shows that collaborative learning is an effective teaching method and fosters student retention better than other instructional methods, especially for those students at the lower end of the grade range. Third, Lang argues that by engaging in small group work, students gain a better understanding of the nature of knowledge. On p. 109, he states that "Collaborative learning...models for students the idea that we construct knowledge together, and thus that they can construct knowledge together in their small groups."

Some philosophers would object to the third point above, if they are anti-constructivists about knowledge (as I am). For someone who holds to a version of the correspondence theory of truth and some sort of fallibilistic foundationalism (as I do), there is value in small groups. Students can come to see that collaborative learning is conducive to discovering truth, or at least getting closer to discovering it. Knowledge is best pursued in community, so to speak.

With respect to the practical advice offered in the chapter, I will highlight a few points that seem particularly relevant:
-Some small group work should be designed that requires students to practice the skills that they will need on other assignments and tests. In the philosophy classroom, this could involve students evaluating an argument in groups, or constructing an argument for or against some position. I often emphasize this to my students, in order to provide motivation for being an active participant. If they believe it will help them on their papers and exams, they are more likely to actually work in their groups.
-The instructor should provide supervision, but it should be minimal in order to prevent the groups from feeling inhibited by the presence of the instructor (pp. 114-115 provide specific advice on the types of situations that may arise and how to deal with them).
-Instructors need to provide some type of feedback, or engage in some sort of processing of the results of group work. I find that this is important, so that students feel that small group work is not mere "busy work".
-It is important to give formal groups, such as a group working together over a period of time on a presentation for the class, time to work together in class. I did this once when I required a group presentation of all of my students in an environmental ethics class, and students were appreciative of the in-class time.

Finally, I'd like to suggest a couple of resources that many may already be familiar with, but which I've found useful. I occasionally set aside 15-20 minutes of class time for case studies in small groups, and have found the book Morality Play, and this section of Ethics Updates to be useful.

Tolerance and Intellectual Diversity

As teachers in the philosophy classroom, we raise controversial issues and encourage discussions of those issues. Many outside of academia are suspicious of those of us who teach at colleges and universities in the United States because they think we are using our influence or platform as professors in unethical ways to push some political agenda.


But is this suspicion warranted? From my own experiences as a student, usually not. I do recall a couple of professors from my undergraduate days who used the classroom as a soapbox. However, most were generally fair and tolerant enough of those who disagreed with them. Last month, an article at insidehighered.com discussed this issue in the context of the charges of David Horowitz and others, who seem to want affirmative action for intellectual perspectives. However, according to the study cited by the article, students believe that other students are more of a problem than professors. Less than half of those surveyed said that they believed other students were tolerant of the political views of all students. By contrast,

Asked about what professors do in the classroom, only 13 percent of students said that they believed professors had presented their own political views in an inappropriate way. A larger percentage — 23 percent — said they had felt that they had to agree with a professor to get a good grade — although the majority of those students felt this had only happened once in their time in college. Even with these findings, there is evidence that suggests classroom expression isn’t necessarily squelched. For example, of those who believed that professors had inappropriately presented their views, 62 percent said that they felt free to argue with the professor. And of those who said they had felt they needed to agree with a professor to get a good grade, only 42 percent said it was because of something the professor said.

Ideally, if we can foster tolerance by modeling it in the classroom, perhaps over time it will become more prevalent in many of our students both during and after college. My question, then is this: What have you done or seen done in the classroom that seemed effective at fostering tolerance in the classroom?

The Perfect Philosophy Exam

It's not what you might think, and it is just for fun, but check it out here.

Teaching Life and the Lecture

On the Chronicle of Higher Ed's website, there is a brief review by James Lang of a teaching memoir entitled Teaching Life, by Dale Salwak (University of Iowa Press, 2008). There are two points I'd like to raise related to this article.

First, I thought I'd solicit suggested readings from anyone who has read a teaching memoir, as described by Lang. This past semester I read Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach, and found it to be inspirational and thought provoking. If anyone has books in this genre that they'd like to suggest, please do so in the comments section.

Second, Salwak raises an interesting point about the lecture, when he says "Conclude with a question toward which the lecture has been building, and then say that you'll answer it next time." I've done this at times in my teaching, though I wonder if it is really all that effective. Students are so inundated with advertising pitches, and I'm not sure that this sort of thing will work in the philosophy classroom. Anyone had success (or not) with this technique?