[MD] philosophy and education

[Joseph Maurer]

On 8/8/09 12:43 PM, "John Carl" <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, John!  I feel better.

Joe

> 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.
>> 
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