Having viewed the rather disappointing Chopin: Desire for Love over the weekend, I’m struck again by how difficult it seems to be to make movies about artists, writers, or perhaps creators of all kinds. My viewing also served to remind me that movies about philosophers’ lives are exceedingly rare, and the few that have been made–or rather, that I am awareContinue reading “Movies on Philosophers: Rare, Hard to Make, Desirable”
Category Archives: Teaching Philosophy
The CTU Strike: Facile Reliance on Evaluation Won’t Work
Reading responses to the CTU strike has dismayed me: that there is so much hostility directed at teachers and their unions in a country where the path to middle-class success used to be understood as a good public education, but which is now directly under attack from a shrieking horde of carpetbaggers and rent-seekers. (Thankfully,Continue reading “The CTU Strike: Facile Reliance on Evaluation Won’t Work”
Are We Inventions or Discoveries?
Is my identity determined by my choices and my actions? Or does my identity determine the choices I make and the actions I take? Do we make up ourselves as we go along, each choice and action working like a brush of paint, a chip of the sculptor’s chisel, a sentence of the writer, bringingContinue reading “Are We Inventions or Discoveries?”
Finding Philosophy in Literature
This semester, I am teaching Philosophical Issues in Literature. PIL is one of Brooklyn College’s so-called upper-tier core courses; all graduating students are required to take a pair of these. Unsurprisingly, just about every student registered for my class told me during the first day’s introductions that they were taking the class because of aContinue reading “Finding Philosophy in Literature”
Rock Arches, Geology and the Wonders of Abduction
During the Pennsylvanian period (300 to 320 million years ago), this area was part of the Paradox Basin, a giant inland sea that dried up intermittently, leaving behind a thick accumulation (5000 feet, 1525 meters) of layered marine salt. Loading by deposition of subsequent Permian through Triassic layers caused the ductile salt to flow toContinue reading “Rock Arches, Geology and the Wonders of Abduction”
Final Exams, Testing Regimes, Contd.
Daniel Kaufman left a very interesting comment in response to my post on final exams; it captures a great deal of what is wrong with testing regimes in general. I’d like to offer some brief responses to it. First, testing regimes lay excessive emphasis on memorization and rote recall, which has a questionable connection with what mightContinue reading “Final Exams, Testing Regimes, Contd.”
Final Exams: Who Needs ‘Em?
A good friend once described studying for the bar exam as ‘a Bataan Death March of the mind.’ That description both trivializes the horrors of the Death March and gestures toward what seems to me, from the outside, to be the mind-numbing, anxiety-inducing tedium of bar-exam preparation. Interminably long video lectures, flash cards, memorization ofContinue reading “Final Exams: Who Needs ‘Em?”
Online vs. In-Classroom Education, Contd.
My response yesterday to Mark Edmundson’s ‘online education is not real education’ New York Times Op-Ed sparked a set of interesting comments in response. I’d like to briefly take those on today as I think they help round out the discussion quite nicely. (Please read the comments in full at the original post.) My Brooklyn CollegeContinue reading “Online vs. In-Classroom Education, Contd.”
Online v. In-Classroom Education: Not Quite a No-Contest
“AH, you’re a professor. You must learn so much from your students.” This line, which I’ve heard in various forms, always makes me cringe. Do people think that lawyers learn a lot about the law from their clients? That patients teach doctors much of what they know about medicine? This is an exceedingly strange wayContinue reading “Online v. In-Classroom Education: Not Quite a No-Contest”
Incubating Corporate Wrongdoers: Catch ’em Young
Luigi Zingales asks, ‘Do Business Schools Incubate Criminals?,’ in response to news that continues the depressing ticker-tape of scandal emanating from our financial and business communities, wonders how so many business executives show little ethical sensibility given that business schools offer instruction in ethics, suggests the classes offered are flawed, and eventually prescribes that: [E]thics shouldContinue reading “Incubating Corporate Wrongdoers: Catch ’em Young”
Samir Chopra 