Announcing new Wilson Prize for essay on philosophy teaching

REMINDER: The submission deadline is October 1, 2015.

Teaching Philosophy is pleased to announce a new essay prize, the Arnold Wilson Prize. Details here and below the fold.

Designing the liberal arts learning environment

A colleague recently e-mailed asking what I thought would make the best classroom environment for a philosophy classroom, or a liberal arts learning environment in general. While I am confident that the physical geography of a classroom makes a difference to how we (can) teach and how students learn, I'd never thought about the issue systematically. 

Some initial observations:

The standard college classroom is not, we might say, very learning-centered. As Donald Ritzenhein points out, if function follows form, then the implied function of a typical 'liberal arts classroom' (the desks in a row facing the teaching model) is to enable students to sit down — and zone out. It's a very inflexible, teacher-centered spatial design, not designed to facilitate interaction among students. 

Teaching Philosophy, latest issue (36.4)

The latest issue of Teaching Philosophy is now available — lots of great stuff, including articles on discussing the nature of art, teaching values to Chinese students, and two pieces on critical thinking, including the debut article in our 'How to Teach' series. Do read!

(Information about how to access the journal is here.)

Research productivity and teaching quality: No correlation!

There's a good bit I agree with (and a bit I disagree with strenuously) in this piece by Edward O'Neill. O'Neill takes up an issue we've engaged at ISW in the past: is it possible, from a pedagogical perspective at least, to know too much about one's subject — can expertise make you a worse teacher?

O'Neill notes there's some evidence for an affirmative answer, but overall, if knowledge is measured by research productivity (which I concede is a questionable assumption), there appears to be no correlation between subject knowledge and teaching effectiveness. O'Neill notes that this finding upends some central assumptions about higher education: 

Yes, I am the teacher

Tired of reading all the great stuff about philosophy teaching here at ISW?

Good. (Well, not good, but...) Because Christina Hendricks at UBC has revived her teaching blog under the name You're the Teacher. Christina is up on lots of developments in higher ed and how they apply to philosophy pedagogy: MOOC's, the flipped classroom, peer review of teaching, the works. So if ISW just isn't doing it for you, visit You're the Teacher. Because, hey, you are the teacher.

AAPT nominations for 2012-2014 Teaching Fellows

This notice is available at the American Association of Philosophy Teachers website.

(Contact: Prof. David W. Concepcíon at dwconcepcion@bsu.edu.)
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American Association Of Philosophy Teachers
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

TEACHING FELLOWS

The American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) seeks devoted, excellent philosophy teachers to serve as 2012-2014 AAPT Teaching Fellows. Teaching Fellows will receive a small stipend ($500) and serve a two-year term August 15, 2012-August 14, 2014. Fellows will advance the teaching of philosophy. This may include mentoring newer teachers, blogging on the AAPT website, facilitating teaching and learning workshops, or other activities.

Initial Review
By Jan. 1, 2012 nominators should submit a short (no more than 500 word) letter of nomination discussing the candidate’s especially meritorious ability to enhance student learning and faculty peer teaching.

Detailed Review
If selected for further review a nominee shall provide by March 1, 2011:
(1) One reflective essay of no more than 2,000 words addressing these four questions:
(i) Describing your particular teaching context, what are your aspirations for your students/learning objectives?
(ii) How are your pedagogies (your structuring of both students' in- and out-of-class time), course content, assessment, and learning objectives aligned?
(iii) Citing evidence, what is the most significant student learning or lasting impact on students inspired by your teaching?
(iv) How and why might you change your classes in the future?
In answering these questions, please be explicit about the sources of the information (e.g. scholarship of teaching and learning, classroom practice, student feedback, etc.) that have influenced your pedagogical choices.

(2) At least four and no more than six letters of support. At least one letter must be from a former or current student. At least one letter must be from a philosophy colleague familiar with the applicant's classroom practice.

(3) While voluminous detail of minor matters will not be viewed favorably, additional supporting material may also be provided. Examples of such materials are:
- Brief course portfolio
- Teaching journal
- Evidence of student learning, with an accompanying explanation
- Student satisfaction ratings (aka course evaluations), with an accompanying explanation
- Samples of student work
- Video of class session(s)
- Course materials, particularly assignment guidelines and assessment rubrics
- A brief CV focused on teaching and learning

Teaching Research

This last semester I finally came up with a series of assignments that taught students how to do independent research over time over the course of the semester. The research project culminated in a final research paper of five to seven pages (revised once) and a class presentation of ten minutes. Both the final papers and presentations were very successful.

Here is the set up for the assignment: students choose their own research projects, within the rough limits of the course topic. Their research must use multiple sources not assigned in class. Beginning about week three or four, I assigned a series of nine or so smaller assignments, due about every other week or so:

1. Three Possible Research Topics
2. Research Report and Research Plan (what have they done to come up with their topics, and what plan do they have to begin research, e.g., meet with a research librarian).
3. Research Topic and Research Report
4. Research Report: Incorporating Quotations and Citations (at least three in-text citations, at least three in-text quotations).
5. Annotated Bibliography and Research Report
6. Revised Research Report Topic
7. Research Project Precise
8. Revised Annotated Bibliography
9. Revised Research Project Precise

I should also add that I scheduled two class times for the whole class to meet with a research librarian to learn more about how to use the library and about how to distinguish reliable from unreliable sources.

Why did this work? Well, first, the course was capped at nineteen. I know that many folks don't get this opportunity - but maybe a stripped down version would work for courses with up to thirty-five students? Second, I was able to give feedback quickly because my feedback was directed primarily to their research rather than the mechanics of their writing (we worked on this using short three to five page papers throughout the semester). Third, it asks students to do research the way we do: slowly, over time, with much rethinking and revising of the project.

The quality of the papers was much higher than usual. In addition, the writing was far more fluid and sophisticated. Most happily, the papers incorporated citations, quotations and research in an intellectually honest and insightful way. They learned that writing about a topic informed by the literature is not the same as paraphrasing or summarizing and that one can write an original paper that reflects one's own work even while incorporating the work of others.

The presentation was key. It takes up a lot of class time - ten minutes each meant that I had to devote about five instructional hours just to presentations. They presented after their first draft but before their second draft. The presentations were excellent. Because students chose their own topics, they were eager to share their findings with the class and eager to hear what others did. The presentations also forced students to think more explicitly about the structure of their papers. The final drafts were substantially revised (a rare event) and were revised because the students had really rethought how to present their arguments and explanations.

An all around success! Have others used a similar method or other methods to encourage students to do research? Pitfalls? Successes?

Academically Adrift: Three Easy Questions; Three Not So Easy Answers

Question 1: What is the CLA

The CLA is the “Collegiate Learning Assessment” of The Council for Aid to Education and is the primary tool for the findings of Academically Adrift (AA). The Council for Aid to Education (CAE) is a national, nonprofit organization established in 1952 designed to advance the corporate support of education, to conduct policy research on higher education, to improve the quality of and access to education, and to conduct research on and promote policy reforms related to education. The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) is a national attempt “to assess the quality of undergraduate education by directly measuring student learning outcomes.” The CLA is a performance-based assessment model, developed by CAE, that directly measures the quality of learning in undergraduate education “that all of the major stakeholders - university administrators, faculty, students, parents, employers, and policy makers - can use as part of their evaluation of academic programs.” The CLA is in many regards a considerable resource for gathering information regarding student learning.

Academically Adrift Part I: The Disengagement Compact

In Academically Adrift (hereafter, AA), Arum and Roksa identify a phenomenon that I assume we all know all too well. George Kuh calls it the disengagement compact (AA, 5). Faculty and students strike a bargain - a rather expensive one. The bargain is one in which teachers agree to ask little of students while providing an entertaining simulation of teaching and good grades, and in which students agree to ask little of teachers while providing compliant behavior and a routine simulation of learning. The teacher is rewarded with time and good student evaluations and the student is rewarded with time and a good GPA.

Who among us would admit to striking such a bargain? Not I. But as Arum and Roksa point out, the bargain is not struck among individuals, nor is it struck in a vacuum. As teachers, we enter an educational system in which this bargain has already been struck collectively. In addition, the bargain is but one among a complex web of tacit agreements among students, faculty, administrators, parents, politicians and government agencies: parents want their children to live in a pleasant, safe environment while becoming more mature and independent; students want a socially engaging college experience; parents and students alike want a credential; professors want a regular, secure salary and time for research; administrators want measurable improvements in student (consumer) satisfaction; politicians want practical outcomes; government agencies want practical, technological innovation. None of the members privy to this agreement have undergraduate student learning as a priority (AA, 124-5).

AAPT Workshop on Teaching and Learning in Philosophy

Readers: Do consider submitting a proposal to the upcoming workshop on teaching and learning in philosophy, organized by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. Details below the fold...

Not for Profit, Episode 7: Philosophy for Democracy

If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away, because they do not make money. They only do what is much more precious than that, make a world that is worth living in, people who are able to see other human beings as full people, with thoughts and feelings of their own that deserve respect and empathy, and nations that are able to overcome fear and suspicion in favor of sympathetic and reasoned debate (Nussbaum, Not for Profit, p. 143).

I always learn much from Nussbaum’s writings, and Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities is no exception. Like the earlier contributors, I’ve found this book to be timely. (My college is in the midst of a “program prioritization”, and it’s quickly become obvious that even -- especially? -- academics on my campus have real trouble describing to each other the value of what we do in not-solely-economic ways that can be useful for planning purposes.) I’ve also found the book to be thought provoking, inspirational in its scope, and maybe even a bit heroic in its mission.

Michael and Chris are right to clarify that the real subject is not humanities per se, but humanistic educations, and I’ll be using “humanities education” interchangeably with “humanistic education”. Most of us know very well that subjects can be taught, and learned, in ways that are rote, that discourage critical thinking, and that stunt rather than enrich imaginative and empathetic capacities. Nothing about the study of any particular subject necessarily leads to any specific affective or cognitive outcomes! So, I think that the book should really have been subtitled, “Why Democracy Needs the Humanities To Be Taught In Particular Ways”, though that presumes that they should be taught at all, which is precisely the point of contention.

(“Democracy”, by the way, is most clearly characterized on pages 24 – 25: a system in which people “hav[e] a voice in the choice of the policies that govern [their lives]”, in which there is “a strong role for fundamental rights that cannot be taken away from people by majority whim”. And “humanities” are those subjects that foster imagination, creativity, and rigorous critical thought, but even subjects in the natural sciences can include those “humanistic aspects” (p.2).)

Many of the thoughts, questions, and concerns that swarmed me as I finished the book have already been raised and explored by my fellow commentators, so I’ll toss out (in the sense of “present”, not “discard”) a couple of topics and questions that haven’t yet come up. That’s not to imply that the previously-raised topics have been exhausted, of course!

1. As I made my way through Nussbaum’s book, I wondered not just whether humanistic education is itself at risk, but whether democracy itself – or, less hyperbolically, democratic citizenship as an ideal – is at risk. Though I’m well aware of the futility of harkening back to some putatively Golden Age that never actually existed, I found myself thinking about some of the ways in which, in this country, we’ve seen a general retreat from public engagement of all sorts, and maybe even from the idea of a citizen as anything more than a once-every-other-year voter. Clearly there are many who have been happy to see that. But in any case, it’s worth thinking hard about the extent to which commitment to democratic ideals is, as Nussbaum fears, a form of mere “lip service” (p. 141). Nussbaum’s book is, it seems to me, as much a paean to the value of democratic citizenship as it is to the value of humanities education. So, even people who are indifferent about the latter should find the book a stirring defense of the former.

2. Speaking of non-existent Golden Ages, I can’t resist noting the interesting and depressing similarities between Nussbaum’s concerns and those conveyed by one of my favorites, John Stuart Mill. (As Nussbaum notes in the chapter, "Cultivating Imagination",) Mill was one of the most committed defenders of the kind of education that Nussbaum, too, advocates, and for similar reasons. In observing that there are some similarities in theme to an essay written roughly two centuries earlier, I don't mean to diminish the sense of urgency that Nussbaum brings to the conversation, but instead, I hope, to add to it.

In “Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse on the Studies at the University of Cambridge” (1835), Mill begins on a high note: “If we were asked for what end, above all others, endowed universities exist, or ought to exist, we should answer—To keep alive philosophy.” But he goes on to lament the “absence of enlarged and commanding views” in contemporary English society, a fault for which he suggests universities are at least partly culpable: “…Perhaps this degeneracy is the effect of some cause over which the universities had no control, and against which they have been ineffectually struggling. If so, those bodies are wonderfully patient of being baffled…. All is right so long as no one speaks of taking away their endowments, or encroaching upon their monopoly. - While they are thus eulogizing their own efforts, and the results of their efforts; philosophy—not any particular school of philosophy, but philosophy altogether—speculation of any comprehensive kind, and upon any deep or extensive subject—has been falling more and more into distastefulness and disrepute among the educated classes of England. Have those classes meanwhile learned to slight and despise these authorized teachers of philosophy, or ceased to frequent their schools? Far from it. The universities then may flourish, though the pursuits which are the end and justification of the existence of universities decay. The teacher thrives and is in honour, while that which he affects to teach vanishes from among mankind.”

3. It’s impressive to me that Nussbaum’s book itself manages to demonstrate several of the features that could be part of a humanities education. One of those features is especially related to the cultivation of imagination and moral sympathy: the careful interlacing of general claims and principles with the telling of individual narratives (by or about, e.g., Pestalozzi, Winnicott, and Tagore). While we'll want more empirical evidence of some of the causal claims than is found in the book, let’s say that the best case for humanities education requires telling the stories of particular people and the ways in which they have felt their lives enriched by humanities education. What does that mean for us as philosophy instructors? I’ll focus on what we can do in our courses; others have addressed and will address the equally pressing question of what we can do elsewhere.

We could help by, when appropriate, incorporating more writings from authors who straddle borders between philosophy and literature (Rebecca Goldstein, Richard Powers, and Colson Whitehead are contemporary US authors who come to mind) or between philosophy and autobiography. We could definitely help by continuing to resist pressures to increase class sizes, because the kind of “cottage” model that Nussbaum advocates fits poorly, it seems to me, with our actual “industrial” structures of class enrollment and teaching. And we could help by incorporating meta-level discussions into our conversations with students. Some of the most effective teachers I’ve seen – regardless of discipline – have been very explicit with their students about the fact that formal education is as much meta-cognitive (and I’d add, meta-affective) as it is cognitive. They have designed assignments that require students to reflect on themselves as learners, so that they can tell their own stories most effectively to audiences – including, perhaps, skeptical family members – who might need convincing of the not-solely-economic value of this sort of education.

How can we learn to teach better?

Thanks to Michael for the kind, and humbling, introduction. I hope it won't seem like a cheat, but I thought I'd devote my opening post to a reading recommendation. The reason is that Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It is one of a handful of books that I'd like everyone in my profession to read, and frankly if I hadn't read it I probably wouldn't have accepted ISW's invitation to join up.

The reason I read Wagner's book has nothing to do with what I found so valuable about it. I was preparing a talk for teachers at a local high school on educational equity, and I knew that one of the teachers was obsessed with the "achievement gap" between American and foreign students, so wanted to learn more about it. And, indeed, Wagner is very clear about the kinds of things that our schools (and colleges) could be doing better for even our most advantaged students -- in particular failing to create opportunities for higher order cognition, and structuring their learning to produce the traits and skills that will serve them well in a global  economy (in this, and other respects, it is a nice complement to Martha Nussbaum's Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities which we'll be discussing later). He includes a nice, and in my experience quite accurate, critique of the AP History exams (I don't think my colleagues in English all agree with me, but AP English seems much better at eliciting the kind of curriculum in which students learn things that are valuable).

But what really grabbed my attention was his description of what he does at the Change Leadership Group at Harvard.

The Harvard program is focused on k-12 teaching. At its core is a workshop, in which groups of teachers (most of whom are unacquainted with one another previously) discuss videos of other teachers teaching in the classroom, led by Wagner or one of his colleagues. The aim is to develop a language for discussing instruction -- and to come to some sort of interpersonal agreement on standards of practice. Like most teachers, his participants have spent very little time observing other teachers do what they do, and are not practiced in rigorous detail-oriented discussion of what works and what doesn't. Initially the reactions to what they are observing are very diverse -- there is no agreement about whether what is being done is good or bad teaching. But over the course of the workshop the participants develop a common understanding, and a language for expressing it.

The idea is simple. If teachers were engaged in mutual observation and had resources to discuss what they were seeing and doing, they could begin to learn from one another, thus improving their practice. To use an analogy that Wagner doesn't use, it's like learning a musical instrument. You learn by watching and listening to others, noting what they do, mimicking it, practicing endlessly, subjecting your practice to your own critique and that of others, in the light of continued observations of others who are better than you are (or who are better in some particular way that you can improve). I suppose there are musical geniuses who learn some other way, and no doubt there's a handful of teachers who are so naturally gifted that mutual observation wouldn't improve things, but that's not most of us. Reading Wagner, for the first time, I started to see how it could be that we could improve our teaching collectively, by deploying the kind of inter-subjective scrutiny of our efforts that we already apply to our research (you never publish anything unless it has been scrutinized by at least one other person, and you aim to get it scrutinized by as many people as feasible before committing it to publication).

My wife consistently points out to me that the schools which actually adopt Wagner's process as part of their ongoing professional development are quite unusual -- they tend to be schools in which teachers have a fair amount of discretionary time, and which are pretty well run. Not like most. But research universities with undergraduate colleges within them, and small liberal arts colleges do seem to me to have the conditions in which a program like this could profitably be adopted.

The other natural worry about the Wagner method is whether the group is, in fact, learning the right things. Are they harnessing individual insights to develop group wisdom, or individual prejudice to develop an unquestioned orthodoxy? What they are not observing within the group is whether any students are actually learning anything which is, after all, what actually constitutes success in teaching.

Learning is hard to measure, and it's especially hard to measure the aspects of learning which really matter (the development of skills, enthusiasm for, and long-term retention of the material). In college, at least in the humanities, we make no effort at all to gauge learning --- we reward students for and celebrate their performance rather than their learning. We don't even have common interpersonal standards for what counts as quality performance -- we grade our own students' work, not one another's, and rarely sit down with a set of papers and discuss with one another what we value in the papers (and what we don't).

So there's a leap of faith in adopting a model like Wagner's, based on confidence in i) the capacity of the people involved for judgment and ii) the deliberative value of interpersonal discussion. I'd like to see something like Wagner's model adopted in a few places, ideally alongside some experiments in aligning standards and curriculum across classes within particular departments. Anyway, I'm recommending the book, and curious whether anyone knows similar models operating in higher education. I'm aiming to pilot a program not completely unlike Wagner's among a multidisciplinary group of faculty this coming Fall (see here) and will report on what we do.

(Cross-posted, as many of my posts will be, at CT)

SoTL?

I am wondering if anyone know anything about something called "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)," what it is and how it relates or has been related to the teaching of philosophy. Thanks!

Another Look At Teaching Pre-College Philosophy

A few months back, I wrote here at ISW about the pros and cons of teaching pre-college philosophy. The response took me by surprise. Many of you engaged the arguments, pro and con, and took a serious look at the reasons for and against teaching pre-college philosophy. Many others expressed their own delight and inspiration at the prospect of teaching pre-college philosophy. Not surprisingly, however, many of you wanted to know more about how to land such a job. The question naturally lends itself to a different, but important, question for those interested in teaching High School philosophy: what does it mean for a philosopher to teach pre-college philosophy? So, there are two questions I will try to answer in response to the comments that have been made since my post. The first is whether a philosopher can land a pre-college philosophy job; and the second is what it means to be a philosopher who teaches High School?

Can a Philosopher Really Land a High School Philosophy Job?
A former student of mine, who is now at Georgetown University and was working in its philosophy department at the time, contacted me one afternoon. Two tenure track positions in philosophy were open, and she had already filed over three hundred CVs for the jobs! “That’s insane!” I thought. I began to ask myself whether I would even have a remote chance of landing such a gig given the competition. There was no way. I am A.B.D, but even if I were finished with my dissertation, I don’t have the pedigree, the publications or the “pop” on my CV that makes a department like Georgetown say, “We need this philosopher!” But I didn’t need the position; I wasn’t looking for a job. I had a job.

I teach philosophy at Wayland Academy, a private boarding school nestled among the farm towns of South-Eastern Wisconsin. The Georgetown University job search caused me to reflect upon the two questions of this essay: How did I land this job? And what does it mean that I am a philosopher teaching High School?

There are High School philosophy jobs in the United States, but they are rare (they are less rare in Europe, but still not easy to come by). It is mostly the private schools, and even then mostly the elite, private boarding schools, that have the relative freedom to offer such a course or courses. Where philosophy is offered, it is usually offered as an elective to seniors, and not usually taken seriously as an academic course. That is not to say that the teachers aren’t serious or that nothing serious ever gets done, but it is often the case that it is difficult to sell the dean on a rigorous philosophy course that has no specific place in the curriculum. But it can be done!

Six years ago, when I was hired at my current post, I was not hired to teach philosophy. I was hired to teach Honors U.S. Literature and freshmen World Civilizations. I have neither an English degree, nor a History degree, but I had taught High School English and History before, and the school liked my advanced education. I was fortunate enough to enter into a dynamic conversation among the faculty and administration about cross-curricular studies and the development of an intensive writing initiative on campus. Over the course of many conversations that year, I was allowed the opportunity to begin a series of history of philosophy classes that would be offered for advanced credit to upper-classmen. The Dean of College Counseling visited one course, then sat down with me to work out a draft document that could be sent to colleges for those students taking the course in order to explain the rigorous nature of what was being offered. There is more to the story, but the point is that I began teaching philosophy at an academy that believed in what I was doing, and didn’t shy away from making it known outside of the academy. This singular fact, that the academy was interested in what I was doing, created an opportunity that I did not think imaginable. I am a philosopher, and I teach High School philosophy. My course offerings since then have included courses in ethics/political philosophy, introductory logic, and independent studies in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the philosophy of language.

So that you do not think that Wayland Academy is the only school with such an opportunity and a vision, explore some of the links below. While I cannot say that there will be a job posted in the “Jobs For Philosophers” section of the APA any time soon, with a little creativity, a supportive administration, some ambition and sometimes a lot of convincing, landing a job teaching High School philosophy is definitely possible.

What does it mean to be a philosopher who teaches High School?
I really do love my graduate institution, and I have never been more supported in my education as I have been by the faculty at Marquette University. Yet, even there, it is difficult for some to understand why I would not make the jump to the college level. To be honest, I reevaluate this question every year, and it is an ongoing conversation that I have with my closest colleagues in the field. But as for the question, “what does it mean to be a philosopher who teaches High School”, there is very little question about it.

1) I do not publish, and I rarely submit to conferences. It is not that I am uninterested, but I don’t have as much time to research as I would like. That said, I am finishing my dissertation, and I have been teaching High School full-time all the way through my graduate studies at Marquette. I imagine, then, that when I am freed from my academic obligations that I too will be able to teach and publish. The most important fact, however, is that I am not expected to publish. I am expected to be an excellent teacher, to coach, to supervise, and to mentor. That’s it. If I publish, when I publish, it will be because I want to, and because I need to say something, not because my tenure depends upon it.

2) I teach four classes each semester with elective options each year. My average student-load is around 55 students, and my average class size is 14 for under-classmen courses and five for upper-classmen electives. I, therefore, can spend a great deal of time crafting lectures for my students, lectures that are specifically designed for that group of minds in front of me at that moment. I do not need to be original or profound; I just need to connect with the students in front of me, who genuinely look forward to anything interesting that I have to teach. Which brings me to my final point:

3) My students are young. They are inspired, and they are not yet jaded by their education or their world. Therefore, if I can show them that what I am teaching is worth studying, they will worthily study it. They live for those “A-ha!” moments, which makes teaching them refreshingly rewarding...and they succeed because of it. My former student, who is now at Georgetown, once submitted a paper to the Wisconsin Philosophical Association annual conference. Under blind review, her paper was accepted….and mine was not. After delivering her paper and fielding questions, she was asked what college she was attending. She demurely replied, “I will have to graduate high school first before I can answer that.” Wayland is not a school for “smarties.” It hosts average students, whose faculty have enough time for them and where they are encouraged to be inspired by what they are learning.

As a philosopher, then, I have a job where I can think and teach for the same reason that I began studying and teaching in the first place, because I love it! My job gives me the relative leisure (heavy on the relative…boarding schools are still busy places) to craft my ideas for the sake of teaching students who want to learn (mostly…they are people after all). It gives me the freedom to publish, if and when I have something to say, and because it’s worth saying (some of my colleagues continue to publish and give papers in their respective fields every year for the sole reason that they want to). Teaching pre-college philosophy allows me to be a philosopher, in the way I understand being a philosopher, perhaps not with all of the professional trappings that the university offers, but a philosopher nonetheless.

I thank those of you who contributed both publicly and privately to the ongoing conversation of teaching pre-college philosophy. I am glad to have gotten to know some of you through email, and I am sincerely grateful for your thoughts. The primary purpose of the piece was to introduce people to teaching philosophy at the secondary school level. I gladly anticipate your responses whether publicly or in private.

Best,
Jason

For information regarding private boarding schools:
http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/

For information regarding private day schools:
http://www.privateschoolreview.com/

For information on where to begin looking for a job:
http://www.carneysandoe.com/

Teaching Pre-College Philosophy

Is there a future for pre-college philosophy? Over the past few years, I have been heavily invested both professionally and personally in the question of whether an effective, worthwhile, and legitimate philosophy curriculum can be established at the high school level, and whether a philosopher can make a credible, scholarly career out of teaching high school philosophy. I have collected a substantial, however modest, set of research on the subject ranging nearly fifty years across many nations. In what follows and what is to come, I offer both what I have discovered and my reflections on teaching high school philosophy. At best, I hope to convince that teaching high school philosophy is not only credible, worthwhile and legitimate, but also an important part of the scholarly field that should be taken more seriously and given greater attention by professional philosophers. At worst, I hope at least to justify (if only to myself) my own professional choices. I welcome all responses, both positive and negative, but ask that the discussion develop a constructive response to the question.


In 1958 the American Philosophical Association approved a report from the Committee on Philosophy in Education regarding teaching high school philosophy. ["The Teaching of Philosophy in American High Schools" by Douglas N. Morgan and Charner Perry. From Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 32, (1958 -
1959) pp.91-137.] The committee was composed of C. W. Hendel, Chairman, H. G. Alexander, R. M. Chisholm, Max Fisch, Lucius Garvin, Douglas Morgan, A. E. Murphy, Charner Perry and R. G. Turnbul. The report refrained from recommending a national curriculum for high school philosophy, but it laid out in detail the pros and cons of teaching philosophy in high school. Of course, philosophy has been taught in many pre-college classrooms for hundreds of years both here in the United States and abroad, but the 1958 document is the first serious, detailed and rigorous attempt in the United States that I know of to investigate the relative merits for students, the field of philosophy, and the citizenry in general of teaching philosophy to pre-college students in both the public and private sectors. What follows is a summary of some of the arguments considered by the committee and my observations fifty years later. (N.B., In some places I have updated the arguments to reflect more the language of our time.)

Arguments for:
1) Philosophy is intrinsically valuable both in its critical evaluation of the meaning of words and concepts, and in its thoughtful reflectiveness that distances the mind from imposing ideologies and assumptions. It is not the content of philosophy that is essential, but the discipline of the mind. Thinking philosophically is a natural good for the human mind and therefore is a good in itself.

2) Many do not go to college, but would benefit from philosophical inquiry before entering into public life. By thinking philosophically, we become better people and better citizens.

3) Philosophical questions arise in us when they do. The brighter students we teach usually already have been pondering philosophical questions from an early age, but it is also the case that even our more average students as well have paused before the distance of the stars, the immensity of it all, and pondered their place in the cosmos. There is no need to attempt to erect philosophical inquiry in our students; the foundations are already firmly laid. If philosophical questions are already present in our younger students, the danger is not leaving those questions unanswered, but having those questions answered by half-truths and dogmatic ideologies. "So much the worse for our culture. We, as philosophers and educators and human beings, have a serious social debt to discharge. Introducing some intelligent young people to philosophy is one way in which we may discharge this debt." (p. 94)

4) Philosophy is intrinsically difficult. Teaching may cut through the diminishing view of the humanities in our culture and reinvigorate high school studies as something more than mere fact-checking, memorization, and petty busy-work. Philosophy promises to bring some scholarly credibility back to teaching high school.

The conclusion drawn from these arguments was that, "[b]ecause philosophy is good, and because some bright pupils want and need work in philosophy, there is a prima facie case in favor of introducing it more widely. It remains to be seen, of course, whether counter-arguments and practical considerations should prevail against this prima facie case." (p. 95) I appreciate the caution of the committee on this point, first and foremost because those of us who teach high school philosophy, it seems to me, are quite passionate about it, and therefore can easily loose our heads over its relative merits. Nevertheless, I find that my academic colleagues at university and professional conferences are more and more intrigued over the level of proficiency possible both in knowledge of the history of philosophy and in thinking and writing philosophically by young high school students. Here are some examples from what I have seen, where I teach students who are bright but average. (I don't mean that disparagingly, but only to point out that my school provides a fertile place for learning for a wider variety of students than "the best". My institution is not among the elite.) In the past five years I have had the privilege of teaching a course in logic, a problems course entitled "Justice and Public Morality", and a regularly offered set of courses in the history of philosophy (Ancient to Medieval and Modern to Contemporary). I have taken students to multiple lectures and conferences at which they both participated and were engaged. One student even had her paper accepted by blind review to the Wisconsin Philosophical Association's annual conference in 2008 (where ironically my paper was rejected --no hard feelings C.P.). In addition, over the past four years the students have invited three guest philosophers to campus for an open lecture. Each time, they filled the lecture hall with energy and questions. This year's guest lecturer is Prof. Charles. W. Mills of Northwestern, who will be giving a lecture entitled "Racial Justice". So I think I am safe in arguing that high school philosophy has many benefits and can be successfully developed more broadly than might be suspected.

There are, however, good arguments against teaching philosophy in high school. No one really argues against it on philosophical grounds, but arguments can be made that such a curriculum is impractical or unwise.

Arguments Against:
1) The students are generally too immature to understand philosophy, and therefore will not benefit from the study. (Similar arguments, I think, can be made of first and second year college students).

2)Philosophy is too emotionally unsettling to be handled by students who naturally lack a certain emotional maturity. High School students are still too emotionally attached to their parent's world-view, and there is not a healthy way for them to facilitate their break from traditional thinking. Learning philosophy can be a culturally and emotionally overturning thing for young students.

3) On a practical level, challenging pre-conceived notions and ideologies can make parents uncomfortable. They might not appreciate their child hearing arguments for skepticism, atheism and moral relativism at such an early age. (I had an interesting experience with this. I have a "No Hunting" sign in my office. A parent came in one morning to talk about his son and saw the sign. He questioned if I was one of those "liberal" teachers who would hold it against his son that he would be missing a day of school in late fall to go hunting. I told him I would only hold it against his son if he came hunting for me. The joke was lost on the parent. I took the point to heart, however, and assured the parent that while my class would be discussing arguments against things the student may believe, I had no intention on changing the student's beliefs or penalizing the student for disagreeing. The parent left unwillingly satisfied.)

4) In-service jealousy over having the brightest students. (I think this is a perk, but it can have its political back drafts.)

5) Curricula become immediately over-crowded with too many courses and not enough space for essential instruction in math and English.

6) Philosophy should not be taught in High School, because high school teachers are too incompetent in the field of philosophy to teach it well enough. Philosophers never entertain a career in high school teaching, but are only interested in publishing and the collegiate life. Without sufficient expertise in the classroom, teaching philosophy in high school is not a worthwhile pursuit.

This last point hits at the heart of my professional goals. Should the current academic culture change? If teaching philosophy, or how to think philosophically, is important in itself, then we need at least some of the brightest minds teaching it at the earliest levels possible. In this post, and in the posts to come, I hope to make the argument that high school is at least as good a place to start as any. Just as we see it being called for in the field of physics, we must get experts who are willing to serve the greater social good, at least for a time, and teach younger students. This could have as added benefits both the positive creation of better teaching in the college classroom once those who teach high school eventually move on to the university sector, and the recreation of philosophy as a more valuable part of our cultural, educational heritage to come.

I welcome your responses and look forward to further discussion.


JMN

Getting Students Involved in Research

Happy holidays!

Some schools are interested in getting students involved in research, e.g., working with professors and getting involved in their projects (if not much more independent research). This would be easier in some fields (e.g., some sciences), but this seems like it would be more challenging with philosophy for a variety of reasons. I wonder if anyone has had much success in getting students involved in their research and, if so, what they did and how they did it.

The Consolation of Philosophy

At this point in the semester (or quarter) it is useful to think about what sorts of things one can do that will help one remain engaged and enthused in the classroom. Just when our energy is running low, so is our student's. Here is something I do to revitalize.


I pick some philosophy to read - just for myself - that has nothing whatsoever to do with my own research or with what I'm currently doing in the classroom. It feels like a guilty pleasure. But it really helps me in the classroom. It reminds me of what I love about philosophy and teaching philosophy. Recently I've been reading up on the Absurd, and I also purchased a book on Epictetus by Long. Neither of these topics has anything to do with 18th century philosophy of mind, or with the courses I'm teaching. But being as worn out as one gets at this point in the year, I don't expect I can do much research now anyway. Might as well indulge my philosophical curiosity.

The Labor of Teaching Philosophy

On labor day, I thought I would quickly raise the issue of whether teaching philosophy &/or being a professional, academic philosopher is (morally) justified labor.


At least two contemporary philosophers have argued that sometimes -- if not often -- it is not. Peter Unger in Living High and Letting Die argues -- too simply put -- that younger, less established philosophers should quit teaching and go to law school to become corporate lawyers to make a ton of money to donate to organizations that help desperately poor people. And Saul Smilansky, in 10 MORAL PARADOXES and "The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement", argues -- again too simply put -- that many philosophy teachers should retire because they would be replaced by better philosophy teachers (he argues this about any profession where there are many, many qualified people for the positions).

A first question I have is whether there are other arguments for views that are morally critical of the profession of teaching philosophy and, perhaps especially, doing philosophical research (or certain kinds of research, perhaps on certain topics...). Perhaps philosophers who develop these arguments never get them out on paper since they found them so convincing that they quit the field (!!), but I'm sure there must be more arguments than these two above (which, of course, need much more explanation than what I gave).

Second, and more importantly, are any of these arguments any good?

I have some thoughts on these questions, but I have to get back to work so I can't answer them now.

The teacher and the researcher

One fact that I suspect becomes apparent to most philosophy instructors fairly early in their careers is the intellectual canyon between the climate of philosophical research and the climate of philosophy teaching. Teaching as I do in a large, moderately selective public university with no graduate program, my teaching obligations almost entirely involve introductory courses (either introduction to philosophy or an introductory practical ethics course), historical surveys, or courses that survey a philosophical subdiscipline (e.g., ethical theory). In these courses, it's rare that the course content intersects with my own research in a very direct or substantial way, and I suspect this is true for most of us: It's the exception when our research and our undergraduate teaching inform one another in profitable ways. Whereas in ethical theory courses, I strive to help students understand Kant's categorical imperative and some of the principal objections to it, my research might concern replies to the objections to the objections, etc. So not only is there relatively little contact between our research and teaching in terms of content, but the level of sophistication in research in much higher than in our teaching.

I imagine that those with graduate teaching duties don't experience this. My concern is not that teaching requires 'dumbing down' the material. (I don't think it does.) My concern is that there is a kind of built-in professional schizophrenia to the profession, where two of the main activities — teaching and research — operate in different worlds, whereas it would be nice if these could be mutually reinforcing activities.

So do others share this experience, and have you changed your approach to teaching (or to research) in response? Are there ways of integrating our own research into our teaching so as to bridge the gap between these two ventures?