{"id":1090,"date":"2008-09-23T00:05:09","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T04:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2008-09-22T21:27:29","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T01:27:29","slug":"teaching-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/1090","title":{"rendered":"Teaching philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m just beginning to gear up to teach the educational philosophy course during J-term. It\u2019s a course I enjoy teaching and one I think of critical importance in the training of \u201creal educators\u201d for the church. There is some frustration in holding the conviction that philosophy is critical to one\u2019s effectiveness as an educator, and living into the pragmatic limitation of being able to teach only one educational philosophy course during a three week J-term. But sometimes one does the best one can with what one has (how\u2019s that for a philosophy?).<\/p>\n

Writer Jonathan Mahler writes in The New York Times Magazine <\/em>(Sep. 19, 2008) an interesting piece on philosophy Prof. Kelley Jolley of Auburn University titled, \u201cThe Thinker<\/a>.\u201d
\nHere are some excerpts: <\/p>\n

This is not to say that Jolley isn\u2019t, above all, a philosopher. It\u2019s just that he sees philosophy less as a profession than as a way of looking at, of being in, the world. \u201cI am convinced that philosophy is not just about theory,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s about a life well lived and thoughts truly thought.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As to the question \u201cCan philosophy be taught?\u201d:<\/p>\n

Being a philosopher requires you to engage in the practice of relentless inquiry about everything, so it\u2019s not surprising that Jolley has spent untold hours puzzling over how to best teach the discipline itself. What he has decided is that philosophy can\u2019t be taught \u2014 or learned \u2014 like other academic subjects. To begin with, it takes longer. \u201cPlato said that you become a philosopher by spending \u2018much time\u2019 in sympathy with other philosophers,\u201d he told me. \u201cMuch time. I take that very seriously.\u201d We were sitting in his office, which was dark with academic books and journals; a large paperweight reading \u201cThink\u201d sat amid the clutter on his desk. \u201cPlato,\u201d he went on, \u201ctalked about it as a process of \u2018sparking forth,\u2019 that as you spend more time with other philosophers, you eventually catch the flame. That\u2019s how I think about teaching philosophy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And as to the question about how to teach philosophy: <\/p>\n

Jolley says he thinks of his relationships with his students less as teacher-student than as master-apprentice. His goal, as he sees it, isn\u2019t to teach students about philosophy; it is to show them what it means to think philosophically, to actually be a philosopher.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I found the article rewarding and inspiring. I hope you’ll read it. <\/p>\n

galindoconsultants.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m just beginning to gear up to teach the educational philosophy course during J-term. It\u2019s a course I enjoy teaching and one I think of critical importance in the training of \u201creal educators\u201d for the church. There is some frustration … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}