Why Teach Philosophy is a new series of interviews with philosophers known for their teaching, their research on philosophy pedagogy, or their work on curriculum design.
Created by Russell Marcus, professor of philosophy at Hamilton College, the interviews, he says, are “an offshoot of a larger research project about philosophical learning goals.”
Currently there are interviews with David W. Concepción (Ball State), Mo Janzen (Anoka Ramsey CC), László Kőszeghy (International Baccalaureate), Tommy Curry (Edinburgh), Rebecca Scott (Harper College), and L.A. Paul (Yale), with eleven more coming soon.
Professor Marcus says, “the interviews are tightly edited audio, typically under an hour, extracted from much longer (typically 3-4 hour) conversations that I had over the past year with renowned philosophy teachers. We’re not flashy, but I think the content is pretty good and the audience really should be philosophers.”
He adds, “I think that the podcasts could be especially good resources for grad schools to use in whatever teacher training they do. Typically, they do minimal such training. Listening to good teachers talk about their craft can be enlightening and useful.”
The Why Teach Philosophy interviews are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc., and transcripts of the longer conversations are posted on the project’s site.
Neat
Should one infer from the italicized words that non-philosophers should not bother to listen?
I suspect they were intending a different contrast – many philosophers might see the topic, “why teach philosophy?” and think of this as outreach to non-philosophers about the value of philosophy in particular. But rather, their goal is to get philosophers to think about the question, “why *teach* philosophy?”
Ok, that makes sense.
Yes, what Kenny said. (Thanks, Kenny!) Making a podcast is the kind of thing that can seem interesting to (non-philosophy) friends and family until they listen and realize that they aren’t quite the target audience. We have been doing our best to make them accessible to a broader audience who might be curious about why they (or their children or whatever) should study philosophy. But the conversations often assume a certain familiarity with the field.
I’m grateful to Justin for helping me reach the folks for whom it will be most useful (i.e. you, dear reader.)
I don’t have any strong preexisting interest in this topic (although I’ve been teaching philosophy for 15 years), but I listened to the interview with David Concepcion just now and I thought it was really interesting and insightful. Nice work!
Socrates asked Athenians about knowing themselves and the Upanishads seems to answer.
Since everyone knows that the paradigm philosophical achievement is the production of a peer-reviewed article presenting an argument for a claim, the series’ titular question is already answered.
Obviously, we teach philosophy either to help the teacher (or the AI-teacher centaur) come up with arguments to publish or to train students (or AI-student centaurs) hoping they will come up with arguments to publish.
Or, the titular question’s presupposition is summarily rejected: we don’t teach philosophy, precisely because the researcher (or AI-researcher centaur) can thereby more efficiently come up with arguments to publish. (But then: who will be the next generation of argument-publishers?)
I mean, if we’re not focused on publishing potential truths, what are we even doing here?
I appreciate the sarcasm!
One thought, though, that I hope isn’t pedantic or humorless: On-line discourse may give us misleading impressions about what most of us philosophers do and value. One reason I started this WTP project is to shine a light on the thoughtful and fruitful work that many philosophers do in their classrooms and for their students. Most of us, I suspect, are not doing what the loudest on line seem to be. I really enjoyed talking with and learning from these amazing philosophers I interviewed.
True, true. And it should be clear that I appreciate your series and what it represents.
It’s understandable to want to present interesting examples that deviate from online narratives. But it’s somewhat beside my (unstated) point.
Cf. tenure metrics, “content delivery,”
legal contractssyllabi, andcustomer satisfaction surveysstudent evaluations. In representing value judgments about teaching and what it’s for, these institutional artifacts betray the extent to which teaching is esteemed.Part of what motivated this WTP project (and so much of my recent work) is my conviction that a good way to save philosophy is to teach it better, There are many creative, exciting ways to teach philosophy, even within the enervating bureaucracy that has attached itself to so much of higher ed. We have a lot of work to do to convince the discipline and the bureaucracy actually to reward effective teaching and scholarship around it. But we at the AAPT have been work working hard at it. If folks are looking for a community of caring, supportive philosophy teachers, check us out. There are lots of ways to get involved and inspired.
Speaking of teaching philosophy better, here’s a shameless plug for my new book, “Team-Based Learning for the Philosophy Classroom” (Bloomsbury), part of a new series of practical philosophy teaching guides edited by Alexandra Bradner and Andrew Mills. Coming soon!
Oversized link here.
Thanks! I clearly need a healthy dose of anti-cynicism serum.