Teaching Philosophy

Good teaching should be heavily shaped by both the subject matter of the discipline and basic features of one’s students. These considerations have shaped my idea of what good philosophy teaching at City Tech looks like for me.

Good teaching should help students realize that they already engage with philosophical questions. Sometimes the answer to a simple question like: “How do you decide how to split the bill after eating out with friends?”—turns out to depend in part on deeper philosophical assumptions about the meaning of friendship, the significance of inequality in income, fairness among equals, beliefs about gender roles, and ways of relating within the family. Students have thought about these questions before, but don’t realize that they are essentially doing philosophy when they justify or explain their habits of conduct. Good teaching should bring these assumptions and reasons to light. 

Good teaching should give students simple ways of engaging with philosophical questions and problems. In all of my courses I give students simple methods (including step-by-step instructions, mnemonics, and other tools) for analyzing readings, ethics cases, or philosophical problems that otherwise might seem overwhelming. While I hope that they eventually can move beyond simple rubrics or step-by-step methods, these concrete methods help to ground them in what can otherwise seem very abstract or theoretical.

Good teaching should expose students to challenging ideas and value systems. Among the theories that we take seriously in a philosophy class include moral nihilism, radical feminism, and communism. We study perspectives on physician assisted suicide, abortion, exploitation in sweatshops, and other practices that students may find challenging or difficult. Students sometimes respond viscerally to these theories and perspectives, but we discuss them anyways from a conviction that is central to the discipline: critical reasoning and rational evaluation and reflection can and should be applied to all kinds of theories and perspectives, not just those that we already agree with.

Good teaching should prepare students to be responsible and successful participants in social and political conversations. Part of the reason that ethics and philosophy training is so valuable is that it prepares students for participation in public life. While not all students will take part in these conversations in a formal way, matters of public life affect everyone and almost everyone discusses them or expresses their views on them by voting. Good teaching in ethics and social and political philosophy should give students basic tools and help them develop their ideas so they can be active participants in public life.

Good teaching should help students develop skills that will be useful to them in many other areas of work and life. Because my students are not philosophy majors, I am sensitive to the fact that they may never “need” to know this stuff. Although philosophy is the subject matter, the skills they learn in class—careful reading, identification of theses and supporting arguments, verbal reasoning, case-based decision making, researching novel questions, working productively with others, etc—all have value no matter what jobs or opportunities students pursue in the future. 

Good teaching is highly accountable. I encourage students to challenge ideas and arguments that I present in class, and sometimes I have to alter definitions, improve arguments, or reconsider positions as a result. I also try to teach ideas and concepts in such a way that attentive students can be sure they have identified key ideas from a discussion or the important facts of the case. I do this by writing them on the board, giving examples to illustrate, and providing quizzes in class to help students determine if they are following. I move slowly and leave time for questions. Sometimes this means I have to throw out test questions because students can show that something wasn’t clear in class. But this is an important part of teaching. I hold them accountable for what we cover in class; I want them to hold me accountable in a similar way. 

Good teaching should endow students with a sense of exploration and discovery that can sustain a lifetime of interest in learning. Part of the reason I ask students to do original research for their case projects in Interdisciplinary Health Care Ethics, for example, is that this activity gets them outside of the classroom (in a sense) and exposed to a wide variety of ideas and research beyond what I can possibly offer them. Once they have started this project they are often eager to bring their discoveries with them to class discussion. By having them engage with the literature on a variety of topics I also encounter new ideas and stay abreast of developments in my field, and it gives us an opportunity to explore new ideas together during their presentations.