Be a life long learner, not a life long student. You can't rob the world of your mind.
How many students who make it into the liberal arts and into philosophy classes still only manage to comprehend the content of these courses dogmatically, as simplisms to "believe"? Instead of grasping principles and values and an aristic ethos of clarity, they still only hear what pleases and flatters them: they grasp in Socrates or Plato the "countercultural" overtones that enable them to shower abuse on the diseased culture of their parents or peers, but they don't grasp at all the overwhelming obligation for themselves not to lie in orthodoxy's bed of sloth. They substitute, as opinionizers and slaves will do, one orthodoxy for another, imagining that the processes of "enlightenment" will change only the matter they think about and not the form of their own activity in reasoning.
Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.
There is a form of poetic and esthetic and moral genius necessary to make philosophical issues truly incandesce for students, and even though I indeed had some world-class professors myself when I went through the curriculum, I rarely saw such gnosic or concretist/poetic passion among them. I am not speaking of broad histrionics or melodramatic delivery, but rather a moral investment of concern, of loving delight and pathos in exposing one's consciousness to the full horrific and magnificent implications of the materials.
Because of the very intimate character of philosophical norms and criticisms, a teacher in philosophy has to be like Alexander the Great: never issuing dictates as to what his soldiers ought to do that he was not ready and willing to leap into doing himself. An excellent teacher is one accomplished in serving as an exemplar, every act of every kind of thinking and every form of perspective must be something he is prepared to illustrate by carrying out himself. Students need to see the incandescent arc-welding that joins ideas together into thoughts. If one is saying something that inflicts suffering, one by all rights had better be prepared to suffer along with the student, to sympathize and assure them that the profit for this agony consists in freedom and clarity.
It is not the business of a teacher in philosophy to "confuse" students any more than it is to "resolve" their confusions. It is his business to explain in broad metaphysical and moral terms the difference between the kinds of factors in our lives that serve as raw material and the kinds of factors that act as organizing forms. A course in philosophy raises on this basis issues that students ought to trouble themselves to evaluate on their own: is this something matter or form, does it tend toward chaos or toward cosmos? If I try to deploy this as a principle or concept or value, what will the teleology of this attempt turn up--an organismic system, an accomplishment of harmonic order, or a self-conflicted and incoherent contrivance that defeats the criteria of the mind?
It is not enough to say that a philosophy teacher presents students with counterpoint to their customary ways of seeing things. A teacher in philosophy is not necessarily very profoundly philosophical for that reason, nor need he or she be. The teacher may be only a few leagues ahead of the students, and may frequently find that a superbright student will tax his or her supposed mastery of the issues. To be honest about these relations and difficulties, I have always assumed that as a professor I was no more than an exemplary student, and "mastery" was merely a way of gaining momentum, not declaring the race was over. Self-mastery in philosophy is how one orchestrates the energies to be able to dislodge really prodigious monolithic belief-systems. It is by no means any kind of self-congratulation.
Students of cunning have consumed their hearts and learned only tricks; they've thrown away real riches: patience, self-sacrifice, generosity. Rich thought opens the way.
Chapter 11: Being an inspiration for others
Just as we're all students throughout life, we're all teachers. In fact, we learn best by offering what we desire for ourselves to as many individuals as we can, as frequently as we can.....Following this line of thinking, it's imperative that we make deliberate effort to increase our inspirational energy, as this will lead us to being both a spiritual learner and teacher simultaneously.
In your training, do not be in a hurry, for it takes a minimum of ten years to master the basics and advance to the first rung. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in the Art of Peace.
Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
Again and again I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run - in the long-run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.
A professor was telling students about his colleagues class. Students in the other class had taken to tossing erasers at the clock. Each precise hit caused it to jump ahead one minute. Before class one morning they succeeded in advancing the clock by ten minutes. Since the new time indicated that the professor was beyond the accepted starting time, the class left. The professor never said a word about the incident. However, he presented the class with a killer of a final exam. As the students labored to finish in the allotted time, the professor amused himself by tossing erasers at the clock.
The teaching of any science, for purposes of liberal education, without linking it with social progress and teaching its social significance, is a crime against the student mind. It is like teaching a child how to pronounce words but not what they mean.
Asked why they like rock music, one high school student said, I like rock music because you don't have to pay attention in order to get it.
A young music student went to a great composer and said, "sir, I want to know how to write a symphony." "what,"said the musician, "at your age?" "I am 19," replied the student, "and you wrote a symphony at that age." "true, true," mused the composer, "but I didn't have to ask how to do it!"
Teacher's Conference, 1703. Students today depend upon paper too much. They don't know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can't clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper? Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend upon their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!
I don't know exactly what democracy is. But we need more of it. (Anonymous Chinese Student), during protests in Tianamen Square, Beijing, 1989
Your kid may be an honors student, but you're still an idiot.
The wonderful thing about garden-based learning is that it's a hands-on, minds-on experience where my students and I learn together.
The world is run by "C" students.
"Dear Mom and Dad," a young college student wrote, "I haven't heard from you for a long time. Please send a check so that I will know that you're all right."
Some of the men stood talking in this room, and at the right of the door a little knot had formed round a small table, the center of which was the mathematics student, who ws eagerly talking. He had made the assertion that one could draw through a given point more than one parallel to a straight line; Frau Hagenström had cried out that this was impossible, and he had gone on to prove it so conclusively that his hearers were constrained to behave as though they understood.
There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a scholar should not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used to have great stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to write down ideas while reading "curious George" to a two-year-old. On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate school for his first job, his thesis advisor told him, "You may wonder how a professor gets any research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview prospective faculty. Well, I take long showers."
Tony is one of the most courageous people I've ever met. Describing his student, Tony Brown, wrestling competitively at 105 lbs, a year after having both legs amputated following an accident.
The inner teachings must be transmitted orally and personally from teacher to student before they can be understood from the heart.
Education Many believe our entire public-education establishment is going in exactly the wrong direction. Rather, having a goal of real achievement, the trend seems to be toward reaching some kind of educational parity, to make sure no students feel badly about themselves. The liberal educational theoreticians tell you that bad grades only serve to discourage underachievers. The primary objective of Outcome-Based Education is to avoid humiliating a student. We should be educating the student first. Students are passing courses and graduating because of lower requirements, because of this new philosophical belief that no one should be held back. Colleges and universities are finding out that a high-school diploma is meaningless in terms of real achievement. The liberal school establishment lowers standards, ignores human nature, refuses to reward success and doesn't punish failure.
"Even though it will disappoint many of you, the evidence is that you have a very bright future." This is how I finished my presentation at American University, eliciting a few chuckles from the audience. On a more serious note, I asked the students to consider a radical proposition: Economic growth and technological progress are not enemies of the environment but are perhaps its best friends, since they allow us to reduce humanity's footprint on the natural world. High tech agriculture boosts farm productivity, which means a cheaper food supply and more land spared for nature. Better sewage treatment means that our rivers and streams can run freer of pollutants. Catalytic converters on cars and better filters on power-plant smokestacks have greatly reduced smog, smoke and soot in the air. But only rich societies can afford to pay for these. In the end, the best environmental program of all is the promotion of prosperity.
We cannot build the new culture for learning to which we aspire in an environment which is depressed and dampened every day by the impact of alcohol and drug abuse, and we should not, and we cannot, hide from that reality any longer. More and more of our students are demanding that they not be imposed upon by others whose judgment and behavior are impaired by substance abuse. It is time to take a stand . . .
