Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, taught himself to read, as a teenager, by spending hours with Plato’s Republic and a dictionary. Later, he describes reading the cave allegory in Republic 7 as “a seminal experience” in his life, “for it had started me thinking and reading and trying to find a way to liberate Black people.” Last year, I decided to teach his book Revolutionary Suicide in my ancient philosophy class alongside Plato. A few (...) key considerations guided my work: I wanted to make sure that Newton and the Panthers were not reduced to Plato cheerleaders. I also needed to introduce the Black Panther Party and its complex histories without overwhelming the students. In terms of Plato, one goal of the class was to offer examples of what might arise as we viewed Republic 7 through this lens. Finally, since the Black Panther Party established many schools—often with inspiring results—I worked to both incorporate key elements of Black Panther pedagogy into my class and design assignments that might allow the students to feel challenged by and connected to these stories. (shrink)

I argue in favor of teaching Plato’s brief dialogue on courage, Laches, in introductory level philosophy classes. My pedagogical approach is dialogical in that the dramatic elements of the dialogue are interpreted as advancing Plato’s philosophical content, and that interlocutors’ positions merit evaluation by students on their own terms. My approach is historical in that the historical biographies of the interlocutors are considered relevant to students’ understanding of philosophical positions. In the dialogue, two generals, Nicias and Laches, offer contrasting advice (...) on military training, and different accounts of courage. I argue that the intuitive appeal, and ultimate flaws, of their views reflects the contrasting bases for their historical reputation at the dramatic date of the dialogue, and historical events that diminished their reputations by the date of the dialogue’s composition. The result is a substantive but approachable landscape for students to explore an issue of intrinsic interest. (shrink)

It is controversial whether a teacher, not familiar with philosophical literature, can do philosophy with children—in other words, conduct philosophical discussions in philosophy activities with them. There are views in the literature that oppose and support this issue. These debates necessitate more studies. Therefore, we carried out a qualitative case study in a kindergarten with a teacher and fifteen students in Turkey. The teacher implemented fourteen lessons with the students aged 5–6 years. The lesson plans were developed together with the (...) researchers and the schoolteachers in meetings over three months. We collected data through field notes, meeting minutes, interviews and audio recordings. Our findings showed that the teacher was able to exhibit behaviors appropriate for philosophical inquiry during the philosophy activities with children and develop a positive attitude towards the practice. This finding supported the views arguing that a teacher with no previous philosophy training can do philosophy with children. (shrink)

It is plausible that there is a contrast between the rich emotional content which is often connected to laypeople’s interest in philosophy and the emotional austerity of doing academic philosophy. We propose the hypothesis that this contrast is one cause of the disappointment some students experience when they begin to study philosophy in college. We also propose a more demanding hypothesis, according to which this emotional contrast is confused with a semantic difference, which misleads students to think that the questions (...) which initially caused their interest in philosophy are not even considered by academic philosophy research. Moreover, we provide a list of concrete empirical research questions which need to be answered to establish whether these hypotheses are true, and we argue that, if they are true, they give rise to a hitherto unnoticed and important challenge to the teaching of philosophy. (shrink)

Should ethics instructors seek to teach students to act more ethically? As might be expected, teachers of ethics are divided on whether ethics instruction should have character development as a specific goal. In this article, the author elaborates three concerns by raising and answering three questions about the goal of teaching students to be ethical: (1) Is it partisan?, (2) Is it possible?, (3) Is it practical? Ultimately, the author argues that the goal of promoting ethical behavior in an ethics (...) course borders on being a partisan affair, may well not be possible, and is impractical. For these reasons, the author argues it is best to not adopt this goal. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching critical thinking. The approach centers around developing the student’s ability to engage in analytic reasoning. By “analytic” in the previous sentence I mean reasoning about analyticity, i.e., coming to know truths about analytic propositions as opposed to synthetic propositions. I consider the ability to engage in this kind of reasoning to be what some philosophers call “conceptual competence”. I argue that focusing on conceptual competence in critical thinking courses benefits philosophy departments in (...) two ways. First, focusing on conceptual competence distinguishes the content of a critical thinking course from, say, courses on logic or probability/statistics. Second, conceptual competence is a skill that is unique to philosophy. I argue that it is also a fundamentally important skill for all students. Thus, teaching critical thinking as conceptual competence can situate philosophy at the center of any school’s general education plan. (shrink)

Bioethics educators have access to a wide range of teaching approaches, including online strategies which became familiar to many teachers during the pandemic. As teaching contexts continue to evolve, reflection on which approaches best fit our pedagogical aims in bioethics is timely. As a contribution to this reflection, we report our experience incorporating podcasts into our students’ learning in two Australian universities at Masters level. We describe the potential of podcasts to positively impact learning and student experience. We explore them (...) firstly as substitutions for lectures and secondly as supplements or substitutions for readings. Based on our teaching practice, we discuss the use of both bespoke teacher-created podcasts and pre-existing third party podcasts. We suggest that podcasts can engage students effectively in bioethical issues, model philosophical dialogue, facilitate high quality class discussion, and give learners access to both mainstream experts and less powerful voices in an immediate and moving way. (shrink)

I offer and defend methods for fair and principled grade exempting (dropping low grades) from the final grade calculation of undergraduate courses. I begin by addressing Daryl Close’s prohibition of such grade exempting from his article “Fair Grades” (2009) and then identify the types of courses and practices that may employ fair and principled grade exempting. I conclude with objections, replies, and the final view that grade exempting can be fair, principled, and consistent with Close’s overarching grading model: the purpose (...) of grading as an “information process concerning the mastery of course content.”. (shrink)