Should teachers of controversial issues disclose their opinions?

My colleagues Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy will publish a book later this year called The Political Classroom, containing a study of high school teachers who teach controversial issues.  Their presentation at a recent conference for philosophers made me think it might be a good idea to articulate my answer to one of the questions the book raises: whether teachers of controversial issues should disclose their views about the issues they teach about (their earlier discussion of disclosure is included in Hess’s book, Controversy in the Classroom). I’m articulating it not to try and persuade anyone, but to broaden the discussion – I’ve only ever discussed these issues with my students themselves, and with close colleagues.

The ethics of teaching

The long awaited International Encyclopedia of Ethics has just been published.  This looks like it will be an excellent resource. Readers of this blog may be particularly interested in my entry on the ethics of teaching.

Teaching Gun Control

Has anyone done at least a section in a course on gun control? If so, what did you do? How did discussion go? What guidance can you offer for what to expect, what to look out for, and so forth? What readings or other materials are good to use?

Teaching philosophy as the provision of critical vocabularies

I don't know how many of you came across this study documenting the apparent decline of moral language in our written culture. The authors scoured Google Books for words with moral significance (conscience, character, etc.), as well as virtue or trait words (honest, patience, kindness, etc.). While the authors found an increase in certain morality-related words (compassion, integrity, fairness, tolerance, selflessness, discipline, dependability, reliability), the overall frequency of moral language in our written culture has declined dramatically over the past century.

Now of course we should be careful in drawing grand conclusions from this study. In particular, we should hesitate before concluding that this study shows actual moral decline, i.e., a decrease in general moral virtue or conscientiousness. 

Tittle on non-philosophers teaching applied ethics

Peg Tittle has absolutely no patience for non-philosophers teaching applied ethics. Is she right? Here's her case:

1. "As far as I can see, business ethics taught by business faculty, ethics programs run by managers, and so on – any applied ethics taught by non-philosophers – is superficial at best.  First, following a code is just an appeal to custom, an appeal to tradition, which philosophers consider a weak basis, an error in reasoning..."

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

Responding to knee jerk student skepticism in ethics courses

An anonymous correspondent writes with the following query:

I am entering my second year in a 'Leiterific' program and as a second year I will be teaching my first section in an intro to ethics course.  Since I have no background in teaching I am a bit anxious about it.  One source of my anxiety is the specter of student moral skepticism! I worry that until I'm pedagogically acclimated that the first few weeks of teaching might be prone to derailment from such conversation stoppers as "Well, that might be true for you..." and "Nothing matters."  I was wondering whether you might consider soliciting ISW readers for advice on how to effectively address relativist, subjectivist, and nihilist student comments.  I stress 'effectively' because while I've received tips regarding general strategies, I'm more interested in hearing about what kind of arguments philosophers 'on the ground', as it were, often employ successfully.  As a new teacher, it will take some time to distinguish arguments that I and my colleagues find convincing from those that 18 year olds will.  My skill in conversational philosophy are still very much in development, and I don't want to lose my students as they wait for me to get my chops.  

Any tips on how to answer the student skeptics?

The Quotable Teacher, installment 2

This one's from Peter Markie, A Professor's Duties (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), p. 147:

It is frequently said that ethics cannot be taught. Upon examination this assertion usually means that moral values cannot be forced down a student's throat, that no coercive tactics seem to work. The assertion usually masks an explicit effort to "teach" some specific moral value to a student — an effort that invariably fails. I generally take encouragement from such accounts because they tend to confirm that students are not mindless and demand to be taken seriously.

A good source for moral relativism

If you teach moral relativism in your ethics courses, as I sometimes do, you may share my frustration about appropriate readings on the topic — particularly defenses of relativism. We're all familiar with some critical work on moral relativism useful for undergraduates, James Rachels' being the best known. But I've found the non-philosophical sources on relativism (e.g., Ruth Benedict) just not intellectually rich enough, while some of the better known philosophical relativists (Harman, Mackie) are too sophisticated for students with little philosophical experience.

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.

------------------------
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?

But I Want to Save the World Now

I am extremely lucky to have wonderful students, not just in the sense that they are diligent and eager, but also in the sense that like many students at my school they are intrinsically interested in the welfare of others. This post is also a bit of a preview to our reading group on Nussbaum because students like these have found a use, and indeed, perhaps the primary use, of a liberal education. But...they see it as impeding their efforts...what do I do with a particular student of mine who is a good example?

Regular intro vs. intro to ethics

The Philosophy Smoker's Mr. Zero reports that students perform better in his introductory ethics courses than in straight intro to philosophy:

I've noticed a general trend in my teaching whereby my Intro Ethics students generally do almost a full letter grade better on average than my regular Intro students (e.g. a B+ to the Intro's B-). I don't think it's because my Ethics class is easier, because the pattern extends to individual test questions concerning material that I include in both classes, such as the meaning of the word 'valid.' 

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?

The university as an 'ethics lab'

Jane Robbins has a gratifying piece about using universities themselves as ethics labs. In a professional ethics course, Robbins used UC Berkeley's recent decision to take DNA samples from their students as part of a 'first year experience program' as a case study.  Robbins had her students consider issues such as the possible conflicts of interest among actors within the university, the educational value of this program, student privacy, and the quality of the university's reasoning in defending the program. Robbins:

Attack of the killer trolley!

I'm teaching the 'trolley problem' tomorrow and found this gem on YouTube. The screaming, terrifying construction workers are the highlight!

Survey of Topics in Ethics Courses

I have created a survey to try to identify which topics are most commonly addressed in introductory ethics courses that have a contemporary moral issues or problems component. If (and only if) you teach a course that focuses on practical issues (with little to no discussion of moral theory) or has a mix of theory and problems (either a unit on theory and then problems or a mix of theory and problems throughout), please fill out this survey below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ethics-course-survey

Thanks!

Sandel's online Justice course

I just came across this website (via Everyday Philosophy at the Purple Bike Café) that is gradually releasing videos from what appears to be a comprehensive introductory ethics course by Michael Sandel at Harvard. I've read Sandel, but I had no idea he was such a gifted lecturer.

The aesthetic is a little weird -- the production qualities suggest daytime talk show meets Sunday preaching meets professional comedy. But the intellectual content is excellent and it's great to see a high profile philosophy professor grappling with highly motivated undergrads and using the discussion to help teach a course -- and a very large course at that. Lots of great ideas for how to teach certain issues. It's also a little eerie to get a peek inside someone else's intro classroom and see how he interacts with his students. I highly recommend it.

Teaching Personhood and Abortion

This isn't exactly a teaching question, although it seems that just about any philosophy question can be turned into one by adding, "And how would you teach this?" My question is what the best arguments for thinking that (early) fetuses are persons, or what's the best way to present this point of view. I think I may be too close to some of these issues, in terms of some research interests, to step back and see things from a more helpful perspective for classes.


Here's a bit of background. To avoid it, skip to *** below.

My general strategy for teaching the abortion issue is to first distinguish a number of conclusions that one could hold on the topic, e.g., that it's always wrong, always permissible, sometimes wrong (in what circumstances?), sometimes permissible (in what circumstances?) and even perhaps sometimes obligatory (in what circumstances?). My goal here is to encourage them to become more precise in their conclusions, avoid slogan-mongering and make it clear that more complex views on abortion are possible, such that some are (or could be) wrong because of some reasons, whereas others could be permissible because of some reasons, etc. (I use this nice page from Fred Feldman to help with this).

Once more precise conclusions are distinguished, I tell them we are going to overlook some of this precision for a bit (!!) and have them break up into groups to develop lists of as many reasons as they have ever heard anyone give in favor of thinking that most abortions are wrong or abortions tend to be wrong, as well as a view that most abortions are permissible or they typically are. I then focus on the arguments for views that abortion is wrong.

Students tend to initially give lots of responses that are "question-begging" or close to it: it's wrong because it's murder, because it's a bad choice, because there are better options (like adoption), and because it's irresponsible and because it's wrong to end pregnancies. They have some better arguments as well, but I tend to have to provide them with the kinds of arguments that philosophers tend to focus on.

***

Eventually we get to personhood arguments. I am not at all impressed when folks just say "Here's what persons really are" and then give some Locke-inspired definition (I believe Mary Anne Warren just "suggests" her view on personhood), since someone can easily respond, "Well, I just don't accept your definition." So what I do is some kind of "inference to the best explanation" type exercise where we identify some clear cases of non-persons, some clear(er) cases of persons (including fictional and otherwise possible but perhaps not actual persons) and then try to figure out - from these clearer cases - what makes persons persons and why non-persons are non-persons. We then arrive at something like Warren's view, but with some reasoning behind it, instead of a mere suggestion.

The problem, if it is a problem, is that on this view early fetuses are clearly not persons. However, obviously some people do claim that fetuses are persons and so I am wondering what, if anything, can be said in favor of this (or, at least, what anyone says to one's students in favor of this!). One thing I try to point out is although many people think that -- if fetuses are not persons, then abortion is permissible -- this is not true because abortion could be wrong even if fetuses are not persons; they could be non-persons for whom there could be excellent moral reasons to not kill. I think my fixation on this fact has given me some mental block to seeing why people might think that early fetuses are persons.

Folks will say, "Yes, these fetuses are not concious, sentient, rational, communicative, etc. beings, yet they are persons nevertheless," so clearly they reject the Lockean view (or at least deny that meeting its criteria is necessary for personhood). I don't like to think that these people are saying something that is analytically false; I think they just have a different view on what persons are.

They then might propose that all living human organisms are persons, that if something is a living human organism then it is a person. This is a view, although what would be of interest would be the reasons that could be given in favor of it.

My speculation is that, for many people, "a person" just means something like "a being with high moral value," "a being that is wrong to kill," or whatnot, some purely moral definition, perhaps with no psychological component built into it. Is this what many people (including students) often mean by person? Is this definition false?!

Sorry for this long post. Perhaps someone out there has had similar bewilderment about personhood, how the term is often used, how you might figure out what persons "really" are, and so on and can help me out. Thanks!

Revisions to the grading of an ethics course

It has been quite some time since my last post so I would like to share with you the changes I have made to the formatting of the grading of my intro to ethics course. I have done away with exams completely and am going to rely on the following: 1) three short critical papers with a 1000 word maximum limit where students will construct an argument and present a defense of one of the normative premises. Each paper will be worth 20% of the final grade. 2) A 10-15 minute presentation on a moral issue of the student’s choosing. They can work with one other student on this project, which will be worth 20% of the final grade. 3) Weekly response papers to the readings. These papers will not be graded but will serve as the focus point for class discussion. Students will discuss their papers in class. The grade for this element will be determined by the percentage of papers turned in and will be worth 10% of the final grade. The total of these three elements is only 90% so in order for a student to have the opportunity to earn an A they must provide a minimum of 8 hours of community service and write a 1000-1200 word essay describing their experience while relating it to a normative perspective discussed in the course.

There are many factors that have led me to make these changes. The number of students who simply occupy space in the classroom and do not get actively engaged with the material being discussed frustrates me. Having them do the response papers, a presentation, and community service are ways that I can have everyone actively engage in a topic. Simply relying on exams (essay exams to be sure) as the major factor in determining grades seems to result in students simply memorizing (often rather poorly) the general features of a theory or principle without taking the time to integrate it into their own framework to see whether or not the idea makes sense to them. Furthermore there is a general reluctance on many students part to follow the argument where it leads. By this I mean that often students will accept the premises of an argument but outright reject the conclusion even if it follows from the premises the accept. This is why I am utilizing the critical papers. It is often difficult for students to see exactly what the argument is that is being made, so by having them construct (or reconstruct) an argument and presenting reason in support of one of the normative premises I am hopeful that they will develop this critical analytical skill. They may still act as if the conclusion does not matter, but at least they will understand that it is unreasonable to do so. Lastly, many people think that the bad things that happen to a person are necessarily that person’s fault. You might be surprised by how often I hear that a homeless person is homeless because they choose to be. By having them engage in community service my hope is that they will start to develop a narrative approach to understanding ethics and begin to see the ethical issues in the context of real people facing real problems that may, or may not, be the outcome of events/actions for which they are responsible. I also hope that this experience will make ethics more real for them and that they can see that normative principles have good practical import on deciding what to do. After all, one of the important moral questions is, what type of life is worth living?

Anyhow, I am excited to see if this all works. I would enjoy hearing from you on what your plans are for teaching intro courses as I find them to be the most challenging to teach.

Millennials and the ethical sensibility

Several months ago, I attended a presentation outlining the attributes of the generation of students that dominate today's universities, the so-called 'Millenials' or Generation Y (those born since 1980). The presenter (Michael Meeks from San Francisco State University) described a number of characteristics of this generation that can make higher education, at least in the ways it's typically organized and delivered, challenging for them. Some of these are familiar: a technology-induced desire for instant gratification; a general lack of written literacy; a delayed onset of maturity traceable in part to helicopter parents; a culture of relentless self-esteem boosting that leaves them ill-equipped to deal with the first confrontations with academic diversity, and at its worst, fosters a sense of entitlement or narcissism. These characteristics are doubly challenging for those of us teaching philosophy — a discipline that rewards patience, intellectual independence, humility, and strong verbal skills!

There was, however, one particular feature of Millennials that Meeks mentioned that got me thinking about teaching ethics, and in particular, the sort of sensibility needed for students to profit from the study of philosophical ethics. (I'll just call this 'the ethical sensibility'.)


Certain Millennial traits actually seem to be part of the ethical sensibility. Millennials are supposed to be socially conscious, and in my experience, this generally holds true. Most of the students I teach think it's important to be ethically good and are at least minimally sensitive to ethical considerations. Of course, every course has its cynics or moral skeptics, but they've been in the minority. On top of that, Millennials tend to be confident and optimistic, owing to their Boomer parents arranging an orderly and generous environment for them. It's hard to imagine students being motivated to think about ethical questions if they think that ethical problems are intractable or irresoluble.

But here's the flip side to their optimism: I've observed that Millennials are alarmed by the prospect of even apparent ethical dilemmas or conflicts. I gather that many of use ethical dilemmas and conflicts as teaching tools — as ways of illustrating theoretical differences, highlighting salient features of the issue under discussion, etc. But I've noted that students try their best to avoid having to make a difficult ethical choice. Some efforts along these lines are actually welcome. For example, students often respond to dilemmas or conflicts by asking for additional facts that (they hope) will dissolve the dilemma or conflict in question. This desire for a full empirical picture of the situation at hand is something I think we should encourage. At the same time, you can't just stipulate facts in order to avoid hard ethical analysis and deliberation. I can think of several exchanges with my students that have gone something like this:

CHOLBI: So Student, what do you think Mr. A should do in this situation?
STUDENT: If P is true, Mr. A should definitely X.
CHOLBI: P isn't true (Or: We don't know if P is true.)
STUDENT: I don't know (Or: (awkward silence))

I've also had students become angry or disengaged in response to this kind of dialectic, lashing out at me or at the subject matter because the facts just don't line up so as to yield simple resolutions to ethical dilemmas or conflicts.

I'm curious if others have had similar experiences and how the issue might be approached pedagogically. The Millennial sensibility is optimistic with respect to ethics: It's epistemologically optimistic, holding that even apparent conflicts and dilemmas dissolve with a dash of additional empirical facts. It's metaphysically optimistic in that it supposes that the world is normatively unified rather than fragmentary — that whatever the ethically right thing to do is leaves no residue or regrets. These are substantive methodological commitments, but I think students have to earn their right to these commitments by considering the possibility that such commitments are misguided — and to do that they have to take the ethical dilemmas and conflicts we propose to them at face value. The ethical sensibility necessary to profit from the study of philosophical ethics isn't hostile to Millennial optimism but it is not especially compatible with an uncritical optimism.

Or so it seems to me.