[lit-ideas] Re: education
- From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:11:21 -0500
Julie Krueger wrote:
. . . . how do you, as College Prof's, deal with students whose
public schooling has left them entirely unprepared for College-level
study and subject matter??
Is a problem!!
But the only thing students really MUST HAVE to be students is
ignorance. If a student's ignorance extends to not knowing what
education is really about, and why one would want to be educated, then
that's where I try to start. It doesn't take up a huge amount of time to
entice (seduce?) students into seeing that thinking seriously about life
is a Good Thing that they want to do.
I used to worry that I wasn't teaching philosophy as the structure of
logical argument for a position, but I realized that the preservation of
truth is secondary to the appreciation of the importance of truth. If
you don't care about an idea or a concept, preserving the truth in
dealing with that concept doesn't seem worth the time. Students
starting college these days seem to need to just think about some of the
ideas--concepts-- involved in thinking. They don't get as far in being
able to argue successfully for a position, or in examining the logical
difficulties in establishing a position, as I would like them to get,
but they do see why it matters that they think about the nature of
personal identity, or what makes an action right or wrong, or what some
of the various meanings of work might be.
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