By Gabriel Martinez, Jul 1, 2009 in Musings, Pedagogy and Teaching
What can we do to encourage the philosophical habit of mind? Short of founding a new university or taking over Administration Hall by storm, what can we do?
Perhaps start a reading group with faculty and students. What books are the most attractive across disciplines? How to retain the interest of students and colleagues over a long period of time?
Perhaps start a lecture series? Who would be the speakers and what would they speak on? Would an emphasis on generalist lectures shut out the social and natural sciences from the conversation? Would allowance for specialist lectures defeat the purpose?
Perhaps have a series of faculty panels on specific topics? How to make it worthwhile for busy faculty with heavy teaching loads and research agendas? How to sustain interest with colleagues and students?
Perhaps take a few colleagues and students on a trip? There's nothing like a few days doing something fun and intellectually exciting together to encourage that sense of mutual rivalry and desire for intellectual peace that Newman thought key. What are good trips? What are the logistical hurdles and what's the best way to handle them?
Perhaps lobby the Dean to give incentives for cross-disciplinary co-teaching and co-authoring that is still of recongnizable value to the respective disciplines? Again, what are the hurdles? What are the pitfalls?
Perhaps, of course, we can teach well, with great love for the whole of our own discipline and great respect for others.
I would be very interested to hear other people's experiences with these and any other attempts at instilling the philosophical habit of mind, as defined in Discourse V of the Idea:
It is a great point then to enlarge the range of studies which a University professes, even for the sake of the students; and, though they cannot pursue every subject which is open to them, they will be the gainers by living among those and under those who represent the whole circle. This I conceive to be the advantage of a seat of universal learning, considered as a place of education. An assemblage of learned men, zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation. They learn to respect, to consult, to aid each other. Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes, though in his own case he only pursues a few sciences out of the multitude. He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal." A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical habit. This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a University, as contrasted with other places of teaching or modes of teaching. This is the main purpose of a University in its treatment of its students.
4 Responses to "Encouraging the Philosophical Habit of Mind"
Thaddeus Kozinski on Jul 7, 2009
It's difficult to do this today in the present climate because at many "conservative" colleges, being philosophical can be seen as relativistic, skeptical, dilettantish, weak-willed, vacillating, cosmopolitan, bad teaching etc., "questions with no answers"; while at "liberal" colleges, not being philosophically "open" about certain issues, i.e., the non-existence of absolute truth, can be seen as dogmatic, pathological, narrow, rigid, parochial, etc., "answers with no questions." Of course, political correctness is the opposite of the philosophical habit of mind, but liberals are selective in their logic. In any event, we need the spirit of both Socrates and Christ at our colleges.
Having said all this, the best way to develop the philosophical habit is to read Plato, combining the tutorial (Socratic questioning from teacher to student to bring them to see true answers, though always inexhaustible ones that lead to more questions) and seminar mode (Socratic questioning and answering from student to student facilitated and guided by the teacher to provoke philosophical questions and aporias).
Evan Bassler on Jul 8, 2009
As a student at Baylor University, I have the wonderful opportunity of being involved with the William Carey Crane Scholars program which actually seems to be doing many of the options you put forth for stimulating the "philosophical habit of mind." The program has an application process that limits the group to about twenty students per classification(each classification meeting separately for the most part) and selects a group ranging from philosophy and classics majors to biology and physics majors giving it a very well rounded insight into many aspects of the questions being wrestled with.
To go a little more into the details of Cranes, it meets about every other week with 2 or 3 professors in one of their houses and discusses a book that we have read. Last semester readings included John Paul II's Fides et Ratio and Josef Pieper's Liesure: the Basis of Culture. Discussions vary based upon what we as students had been thinking about, but they are always lively and push us to better understand questions ranging from timeless truths to present news stories. This all culminates in a retreat weekend held in the Spring that involves speakers from various colleges, Notre Dame or University of New Brunswick for example, speaking from their area of expertise on a general theme.
Something like the Crane Scholars program is a wonderful way of bringing a careful thought life into the non-classroom part of a student's life and helps foster friendships that encourage discussion and debate on issues. So while the program does focus more on students desiring to become college professors and faculty, I think it could be a great model for encouraging a philosophical habit of mind.
Stephen Clements on Jul 9, 2009
I have been pleased by the lively and thoughtful responses generated by my original posting on the liberal arts. I was particularly appreciative of Patrick Ford’s lengthy initial post on the topic, which nicely acknowledged the nature of our problem. Namely, most of us ISI-types are committed to liberal learning, yet we often find ourselves working in vast universities, with thousands of students there merely to obtain a credential (while waiting to reach an age of professional employability), and faculty primarily committed to their own research interests and careers. A key point from my first post was that even in institutions forthrightly designed to promote liberal learning (such as my own), the challenge is still enormous given the pragmatic orientation of most students and the various time pressures on faculty members.
In both Patrick’s original note and his response to Susan Hanssen, he raises many of the questions that were lurking in the background of my “heresy” piece, and that were insufficiently articulated in our discussion of liberal learning early in the Summer Institute. I am very grateful to see someone involved in ISI’s university stewardship program asking these questions, and struggling to discern the types of follow-up activities that would be most useful to those of us out in the trenches.
Lee’s discussion of the business structure of higher education, and the need to put tuition-paying students into classrooms to support the college or university infrastructure, is indeed a critical part of the picture. However, I am still pondering the extent to which exploring this business structure of colleges and universities operates will necessarily help us understand how to promote liberal learning more effectively on our campuses. I would welcome additional thoughts on that from other interested bloggers among us.
For my part, I’d suggest the book project notion Patrick offered might serve several purposes. Rather than being devoted primarily to describing and discussing the economic and managerial aspects of higher education (i.e. “the whole gargantuan mess”), the first part of the volume could focus on the large-scale impediments to liberal learning in early 21st century America. One of these would presumably be postmodernism and the radical skepticism of the humanities and social sciences in academia. Another would involve the culture of students—the extreme pragmatists we’ve been discussing. (Maybe this would be an update of Allan Bloom’s marvelous description of his Cornell and Chicago undergrads in The Closing of the American Mind, and an extension of this analysis to college students from other social classes as well.) A third and very significant component would be the business practices of higher education. A fourth might be the incentive structures around faculty members, especially at research universities, which reward scholars for ever more specialized research and penalize them for attending to the classroom.
Then the second portion (one-half? two-thirds?) could feature some thoughtful suggestions about how to counteract these tendencies in the interest of promoting liberal learning. This section could explore those issues of environment, students, pedagogy, curricula, and so forth that are presumably important for a vital liberal education. It could also feature case studies of programs, departments, schools, or entire institutions that had successfully surmounted the challenges to provide excellent liberal learning opportunities for students.
I’d be particularly interested in places that sell the development of a philosophical habit of mind to students on the ground that such an intellectual and spiritual foundation will enable them to serve more effectively as professionals and business persons. In other words, given the pragmatism of our students and the need for our institutions to generate revenue (to pay our salaries and justify our existence), I’d like to hear strategies for attending to the “pragmatics” of a liberal education. It would be great to hear of places where faculty in philosophy, political theory, and literature actually work closely with faculty from business, engineering, nursing, and other professional fields to ensure that students have a solid base in both the liberal arts and their specialty—if indeed such places exist.
As a post-script, I can’t help but note the irony in Evan Bassler’s comments elsewhere about the liberal learning program he has taken part in at Baylor. The selection process here seems implicitly to acknowledge difficulties of interesting more than a modest number of students in serious reading of texts, the pursuit of Truth, the search for wisdom across the disciplines, and the cultivation of a philosophic habit of mind.
Gabriel Martinez on Jul 10, 2009
I think an ISI book along the lines you suggest would be an excellent idea. The "positive" part of the book (the part that suggests constructive ways forward) should take up most of the book.
Criticisms abound, and can be easily referenced (sure, pointing out pitfalls is useful for would-be-reformers, so these should be noted in something like a long concluding chapter).