Teaching Philosophy
The primary philosophical attitude is wonder. Wonder is amazement, an orientation in which one recognizes a knot in one’s thinking and wishes to untie it. Therefore the function of my philosophy courses is to provide an environment in which the students cultivate their sense of wonder. Moreover, teaching the great philosophical classics provide a corpus of possibilities for students to appropriate in investigation of the object of inquiry. Teaching logic provides students with the resources to critically investigate the truth-value of these possibilities. Mentoring students in wonder, philosophical history, and logic provide the proper attitude, content, and method for students to think for themselves and avoid exploiting others as crutches for their own thinking.
In order to wonder one cannot already know the object of wonder. Hence, much of my work in the classroom consists in helping students unlearn their knowledge. One method by which this unlearning occurs is the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a dialogue between the mentor and the students in the form of an argumentative question and answer. I begin by posing questions from the text to the class, and often students’ first answers are off the mark. This dialogue continues until students offer better answers. When there is a positive outcome, the students are more apt to remember the answer through the Socratic method, rather than if I had given them the answer at the beginning of class. The Socratic method helps students unlearn their knowledge and simultaneously reinforces positive outcomes. Since students provide the answers they are learning to teach themselves and therefore becoming independent learners. As such, they are not containers for my knowledge, but transform themselves. Another advantage to this method is its applicability to all skill levels of argumentation. Using this method properly requires knowing which questions to ask in order to prompt the students appropriately, not merely knowing what answers to provide students. In addition, when students respond with poor answers one must understand how to use the poor response to teach the lesson. As I am still perfecting this skill, I am content to be a student of Socrates.
In addition to the Socratic method, I hold lectures, have student debates, and assign thought experiments in order to teach concepts and arguments in the text we are reading. When lecturing I work bottom-up from the student’s perspective. Working bottom-up allows me to acquaint students with an unfamiliar concept by connecting it to familiar concepts. By using thought experiments that play on common ideas, the reality of less familiar ideas come to life. When organizing debates, I require students to argue from the perspective with which they disagree. Challenging students to argue an idea that opposes their belief builds theoretical empathy for foreign ideas.
Practicing the Socratic method, bottom-up lecturing, and reverse debate in class prepares students to independently re-construct arguments from philosophical texts. Learning to reconstruct the argument in a philosophical text is essential for reading philosophy because students truly understand the text when they understand the author’s argument. Assignments requiring explication and criticism of texts bring logic and the history of philosophy into one purview. Developing these skills encourages students to create their own arguments against the philosophers, thereby cultivating their ability to actively engage the texts instead of merely receiving the content passively. All these teaching methods are successful with students, but I have observed that students are more likely to fully engage in philosophical texts if their instructor shows that he or she cares about them. By showing my students that I care about their well-being, students are motivated to participate. Providing students with the motivation, critical skills, and practice needed to mature their wonder allows students to enter into conversations with great thinkers. These provisions take the thought of great philosophers out of books and into the experience of the students, bringing philosophy alive for them.
In order to wonder one cannot already know the object of wonder. Hence, much of my work in the classroom consists in helping students unlearn their knowledge. One method by which this unlearning occurs is the Socratic method. The Socratic method is a dialogue between the mentor and the students in the form of an argumentative question and answer. I begin by posing questions from the text to the class, and often students’ first answers are off the mark. This dialogue continues until students offer better answers. When there is a positive outcome, the students are more apt to remember the answer through the Socratic method, rather than if I had given them the answer at the beginning of class. The Socratic method helps students unlearn their knowledge and simultaneously reinforces positive outcomes. Since students provide the answers they are learning to teach themselves and therefore becoming independent learners. As such, they are not containers for my knowledge, but transform themselves. Another advantage to this method is its applicability to all skill levels of argumentation. Using this method properly requires knowing which questions to ask in order to prompt the students appropriately, not merely knowing what answers to provide students. In addition, when students respond with poor answers one must understand how to use the poor response to teach the lesson. As I am still perfecting this skill, I am content to be a student of Socrates.
In addition to the Socratic method, I hold lectures, have student debates, and assign thought experiments in order to teach concepts and arguments in the text we are reading. When lecturing I work bottom-up from the student’s perspective. Working bottom-up allows me to acquaint students with an unfamiliar concept by connecting it to familiar concepts. By using thought experiments that play on common ideas, the reality of less familiar ideas come to life. When organizing debates, I require students to argue from the perspective with which they disagree. Challenging students to argue an idea that opposes their belief builds theoretical empathy for foreign ideas.
Practicing the Socratic method, bottom-up lecturing, and reverse debate in class prepares students to independently re-construct arguments from philosophical texts. Learning to reconstruct the argument in a philosophical text is essential for reading philosophy because students truly understand the text when they understand the author’s argument. Assignments requiring explication and criticism of texts bring logic and the history of philosophy into one purview. Developing these skills encourages students to create their own arguments against the philosophers, thereby cultivating their ability to actively engage the texts instead of merely receiving the content passively. All these teaching methods are successful with students, but I have observed that students are more likely to fully engage in philosophical texts if their instructor shows that he or she cares about them. By showing my students that I care about their well-being, students are motivated to participate. Providing students with the motivation, critical skills, and practice needed to mature their wonder allows students to enter into conversations with great thinkers. These provisions take the thought of great philosophers out of books and into the experience of the students, bringing philosophy alive for them.
