APA Committee on the
Teaching of Philosophy

Report on AAPT/APA
Teaching Seminar

The following appeared in Volume 70, Number 2 of the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.

The APA Committee on Teaching, in cooperation with the American Association of Philosophy Teachers sponsored a seminar on teaching at Old Dominion University. The seminar was conducted in conjunction with the AAPT Conference and Workshop. The APA was able to provide modest support to the graduate students who attended. Martin Benjamin, of Michigan State University, conducted the seminar, as he has on previous occasions. Professor Benjamin together with Betsy Decyk, President of AAPT, and Rosalind Ladd, Chair of the APA Committee on Teaching, selected the 16 participants from over 30 applicants. The following advanced graduate students participated: Amy Baehr; Janet Borgerson; Richard Buck; Andrew Carpenter; Jill Conway; Sarah Cunningham; William Day; Kathleen Poorman Dougherty; Maureen Doyle; Stephen Finn; Rebecca Ford; Brie Gertler; Seth Holtzman; Nan LeClaire-Conway; Mary Ellen Marinucci and Pauline Sargent. The following report on the seminar was prepared by Amy Baehr.

Filling a troubling gap in much graduate education in philosophy, the American Philosophical Association and the American Association of Philosophy Teachers sponsored a seminar for advanced graduate students on teaching philosophy. The Seminar was conducted at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, August 1-4, 1996. From a pool of over 30 applicants, 16 graduate students were selected to participate and provided with travel grants. Eric Hoffman, Executive Director of the APA, and Rosalind Ladd, past President of the AAPT and Chair of the APA Committee on Teaching Philosophy, attended and participated in all of the seminar sessions. Martin Benjamin, of Michigan State University, led the seminar. Many of the graduate student participants had taught courses of their own, but several were preparing to teach solo for the first time. Many had done considerable thinking about teaching prior to the seminar and brought valuable insights to the discussion. Martin Benjamin, with his extensive experience teaching philosophy--and teaching the teaching of philosophy--planned the seminar, selected readings, and facilitated lively and constructive discussions. The seminar took place in the context of the AAPT's 11th International Workshop-Conference on Teaching Philosophy, which allowed seminar participants to attend afternoon AAPT sessions and to mix with more experienced philosophers who both value and have given great thought to teaching philosophy.

The graduate student participants were employed as philosophy instructors in a variety of institutions--public and private, large and small, elite and community colleges--and practiced a variety of approaches to philosophy. This diversity led to the observation, made early in the seminar, that to know what makes for good philosophy teaching involves having some idea about what philosophy is and is good for. While there may be parallels in other disciplines, the link between philosophical commitment and philosophy teaching is uniquely tight in our discipline. But rather than simply come to consensus on what philosophy is and is good for, the seminar offered participants an opportunity to clarify for themselves individually, within the context of challenging discussions, what kind of philosophers they are or aspire to be, what they think philosophy is good for and, given that, what excellence in philosophy teaching is. This kind of clarity is hard to come by for new teachers in a discipline that glorifies research over instruction and appears to assume that good teachers will emerge fully formed from Ph.D. programs.

Discussions were informed by a selection of readings, well chosen by Martin Benjamin, and mostly from the journal Teaching Philosophy. During the sessions attention moved back and forth from philosophical to practical issues, and to the relations between the two. Clearly a report of this size cannot do justice to the breadth of topics discussed and insights gained, thus what I offer here are some of the impressions of one participant. We began by considering what the goal of philosophy teaching should be and whether this goal is value neutral. The former question elicited two familiar emphases. Some stressed the goal of rational autonomy, arguing that philosophy teaching is uniquely able to help students to become critical of received opinion and more truly the authors of their beliefs. Others suggested that philosophy teaching's goal should be to usher students into a community of inquiry, arguing that philosophy is uniquely able to foster in students the skills necessary for intellectual cooperation. These goals are clearly not mutually exclusive, and discussion progressed to consider whether a variety of pedagogical techniques might foster both. But several participants expressed concern about the practical implication of the approaches. Some asked whether the pedagogical goal of rational autonomy might not be biased toward the typical male student who may feel most comfortable in a competitive intellectual environment. Others worried that stressing cooperative learning--for example, giving group assignments or requiring participation in discussions--might violate the right of students to pursue studies in solitude. It was suggested that fairness to students with diverse learning styles might make pursuing both goals imperative.

Either goal, however, may run afoul of students from fundamentalist religious backgrounds. A number of participants had been challenged by students who did not wish to submit their views to the scrutiny of philosophical inquiry. While at least one participant argued that a teacher's duty to respect students requires that such a student be left alone, the deeper philosophical question remained unanswered. Is it true that the skills philosophers teach are value neutral--skills that everyone needs/wants, or could be shown to need/want, regardless of world view? Or are these skills part of a particular kind of life--namely, the examined life--and in serious conflict with many religious conceptions of the good life?

Discussion progressed to consider whether claims about the goals of philosophy teaching imply claims about students' intellectual and moral development, and about the role of philosophy education in this development. Many participants found fault with William G. Perry's schema--which Martin Benjamin had offered for discussion--according to which traditional students begin from an intellectual and moral absolutism, pass through relativism, and advance to contextualized commitment.¹ (This view, of course, sees philosophy's job as, first, to help bring students from absolutism to relativism, and then to help them see the contradictions involved in relativism and to embrace contextualized commitment.) Participants worried that Perry scheme may outline only one of many developmental trajectories. Nontraditional students, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, or female students may take other paths. It was suggested, for example, that students from communities that have suffered discrimination may not begin with unreflective absolutism and pass through relativism. They may begin with relativism, as their lives have taught them to doubt, not to trust, authority. The example of Malcolm X was given to illustrate that such relativism may be followed by absolutism, and then by contextualized commitment. In any case, if it is true that students take a variety of developmental paths, it becomes even more difficult to determine what role philosophy teaching can play in student intellectual and moral development. Like most difficult problems, this one was left unresolved.

A lively discussion was initiated by an article by William B. Irvine,² and a presentation at the AAPT conference by Nan-Nan Lee, of Xavier University at Chicago,³ on teaching introductory philosophy courses without books. At least one seminar participant had taught a book less course and discussion considered whether such an approach capitulates to the "dumbing down" of our intellectual culture, and whether learning what "the great philosophers" said, learning to read difficult and obscure texts, and learning to understand philosophical arguments embedded in text, are central to learning philosophy. Advocates argued that book less teaching should not dominate philosophy education, but that it has an important role to play in an introduction to philosophy. It main virtue is that it makes students' own ideas the centerpiece of inquiry and is thus more likely to engage students in doing philosophy rather than just reading and regurgitating it. Critics argued that while learning to do philosophy is important, so is learning what influential and insightful others have thought, learning to decipher difficult and obscure texts, and learning to understand arguments embedded in text. They suggested as well that students taking further philosophy courses will not have covered presupposed material, to which the advocates answered that students who can actually do philosophy will be way ahead of their peers who only know how to read and regurgitate. On a practical point, some pointed out that regardless of the merits of book less philosophy teaching, many instructors are tied to required texts, many must teach traditional courses to enable students to transfer credits to other institutions, and many worry about their tenure files, and thus don't have the liberty to teach this way. This suggests that if book less teaching is to make more than a cameo appearance in philosophy departments, it would have to receive administrative and discipline-wide recognition. It remains to be seen, however, whether the advocates of book less teaching can convince their colleagues to recognize such courses as useful additions to the philosophy curriculum.

A session on "the first day of class" focused our attention on practical issues such as syllabus writing, strategies for encouraging students to read, innovative writing assignments, and grading. Dovetailing with an earlier conversation, one interesting discussion focused on the merits of giving grades for participation. Besides considering whether grading participation is coercive to students with nonparticipatory learning styles, participants tried to zero in on whether straightforward criteria could be given for grading participation. One participant had done a good deal of thinking on this and offered to share her criteria for good participation with the rest of us. (I hope that she has them published so a wider audience may consider them!) Such information exchanges were very helpful. They ranged from advice on easy-to-use grading software, to a list of films useful for teaching philosophy, to information on the AAPT list serve for discussion of teaching philosophy. Indeed the seminar functioned as an introduction to the breadth of resources available to philosophy teachers, among them the American Association of Philosophy Teachers itself, the APA Newsletter on Teaching, and the journal Teaching Philosophy. Martin Benjamin encouraged participants to continue to make use of these resources, and to continue the conversations begun in at Old Dominion by contributing to the Association, the Newsletter, and the journal.

While it is, I believe, appropriate to lament that graduate programs are not treating philosophy teaching as seriously as they treat research and writing, we should celebrate the fact that the APA and the AAPT have seen fit to commit resources to the teaching of a new generation of philosophy teachers. And we should make sure that this commitment is on-going. I believe I speak for all participants in the seminar when I offer thanks to the APA and the AAPT, and especially to Martin Benjamin, for giving us this opportunity to begin to define excellence in teaching for ourselves. And I strongly encourage graduate students to apply to future seminars!

Notes

William G. Perry, "Cognitive and Ethical Growth: The Making of Meaning," in Arthur Chickering, ed., The Future of American Colleges (Jossey-Bass, 1981), pp. 79-80. Back
William B. Irvine, "Teaching Without Books," Teaching Philosophy 16 (March 1993): 35-46. Back
Nan-Nan Lee, "Teaching without Text," unpublished manuscript. Presented at the 11th International Workshop-Conference on teaching Philosophy, July 31-August 4, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. Back

APA Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy

Report on AAPT/APA Teaching Seminar

Notes

APA Committee on the
Teaching of Philosophy

Report on AAPT/APA
Teaching Seminar