Teaching Philosophy

Volume 33, Issue 3, September 2010

Mason Marshall, Aaron M. Clark
Pages 271-289

Is Clarity Essential to Good Teaching?

It is common to think that clarity is an essential ingredient of good teaching, meaning, in part, that good teachers always make it as easy as possible to follow what they say. We disagree. What we argue is that there are cases in which a philosophy teacher needs to forego clarity, making strategic use of obscurity in the undergraduate classroom.