[MD] philosophy and education

[John Carl]

Gav,
your friend Tess's reaction to sacred and powerful things presented in a
classroom environment wherein a "teacher" expounds and murders to dissect
reminded me powerfully of my own introduction to philosophy - which ought to
be taught in the 7th or eighth grade, if you ask me.  Kids naturally have
questions about their existence and the meaning of life, they ought to be
encouraged to explore this, but the reason they are not has much more to do
with adult unwillingness than otherwise.  I think its like this:  they are
already questioning authority in adolescence, why give them more ammo?

Anyway, my first real philosophy teacher provided me with the opposite of
Tess's experience.  Needless to say, since one of his texts was Needleman's
Sense of the Cosmos, which makes a big point of a teaching being a process
with order and context.

Anyway, I had him for logic and he recommended to me a "special" class he
taught called, "Rationality, Mysticism and the Environment"  A bit ambitious
for a Jr. College Prof, and a bit ambitious for Jr. College Students.  The
first day he looked around our class of about 20 and predicted more than
half would drop out before the end.  He said this was a graduate-level
course in the guise of a Jr. College course and he taught it out of his own
desires.  The required reading list contained six books and ten more were on
the recommended list.  The authors required of us were Jacob Needleman,
Allan Watts, Robert Pirsig, Theodore Roszak, Fritjof Capra, Gary Snyder and
a few more that I've forgotten.

  We ended up with about seven hard-core fanatics, few of whom gave any sort
of shit about grades or academics but were, like most of the people on this
forum, fascinated with philosophical discourse, which occured around a table
with passionate discussion of the kind where you hear groans when the class
ends because we didn't want to stop and sometimes spilled out into the quad.
 We came to care about each other as much as we cared for our learning, and
I still feel a sense of comraderie and affection for those fellow students
of mine.

But what stands out most in my memory, was a feeling of how right it felt,
and how weird and wrong it was in comparison to the rest of the info-mill
surroundings.

The feeling that "It doesn't have to be this way folks."

John

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 4:19 PM, gav <gav_gc at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> a friend of mine, tess, an exceptionally gifted writer, once reacted in a
> lecture about the texts they were asked to read. they were being asked to
> read what she considered sacred and powerful things, things which when fully
> digested and incorporated are dramatically life-changing. but these tomes
> and excerpts were presented casually - no thought was given to this point;
> no measure available to help a true student integrate these initiatory
> experiences.
>
> the manner in which these works are presented at uni belies the attitude
> towards them. for the academic these works are *intellectual amusement*
> (generally speaking, there are exceptions no doubt); they have not
> incorporated them; the enthusiasm and passion are lacking - they are not
> 'filled with god', overflowing naturally, a fountain from which his/her
> students can drink in intellectual and spiritual nourishment. the student
> responds to this attitude in kind, generally; there are always those few
> genuine seekers who spot this falsity, this cynicism, and react against it -
> like tess.
>