Practical Suggestions for Teaching Small Philosophy Classes

Published in Teaching Philosophy 28:1 (March, 2005)

*Please cite only from published version*

Eddy Nahmias
Department of Philosophy
Florida State University


Introduction
I dont presume to have any methods for teaching philosophy that are better than the ones
you already use. But I may have some that are different from the ones you use. And in my
experience, just being exposed to different methods helps us re-think the methods we use and
perhaps modify them in experimental ways, helping us to identify those methods we find most
effective and also preventing us from becoming too settled and comfortable with our current
teaching. One of the most difficult challenges for teachers is to change what they doboth the
content and the form of their classes.
1
But without changing what we do, it is too easy to lose
that nervous energy, fueled by uncertainty and experimentation, which makes teaching
interesting. I am just getting to that point in my teaching career where I find myself stagnating a
bit from repetition, losing that nervous energy. I need to try some new methods. So, I offer here
some of the methods I have found most successful, the ones I am least likely to part with, and I
hope others will continue to share their most successful methods for teaching philosophy so that
I can begin experimenting and regain some nervous energy.
The methods described below were developed for small classes (under 25 students).
Though I think philosophy should always be taught in such small classes, I know all too well, as
I teach an Intro class to 110 students, that this goal cannot always be met. For those who teach
larger classes, I have little adviceI continue to seek it.
2
Horseshoe Seating
I have my students arrange their desks in a horseshoe in front of me. Theres nothing
new or exciting about this method; nonetheless, it works remarkably well. It gets students to
know one another (especially combined with the name card method described below). They talk
more often and more openly, since they dont have anyone to hide behind. And they get into
more debates, since they are facing each other. Finally, even though the teacher is at the focal
point, he or she is still at the same level as the students. (The only reason I use a horseshoe
shape rather than a circle is so the students at the front can see the board without turning around).
Of course, I stand up and move to the board or podium, but when we engage in general
discussion, I sit with the students to foster an egalitarian learning environment as we engage the
philosophical questions. When students do presentations (individually or in groups), they sit at
the front, and I sit with the other students. Horseshoe seating also allows students to sit on
opposing sides during debates (or to move to opposing sides in the course of a discussion so that
they are literally forced to take a position).
2


Name Cards as an Alternative to Hand Raising
On the first day of class I give the students a 5 x 8 note card which they fold in half
lengthwise. On one face they write their full name horizontally; on the other face they write their
first name vertically. I ask them to be as creative as they like as long as its legible from a
distance. They place these cards horizontally on the desk or table in front of them. Now, each of
the students can learn each others names, and they can address each other personally in
discussions. Of course, the teacher also has an easy method for learning students names quickly
(and I need all the help I can get with this).
3
But I also use these cards as an alternative to hand raising. When students have questions
or comments, instead of holding up their hands, they simply turn their name card vertically. In
my experience, this technique has several advantages:
Students are more willing to enter the discussion at any time by raising their cards than
having to hold their hands up. They do not feel like they are interrupting the teacher or other
students.
Competition for attention is reduced. Students are more willing to raise their cards even if
many other cards are raised than they are to raise their hands among a throng of hands.
When a controversial question or issue is raised, you will often see many cards raised to
respond, and you can take the responses in whatever order you want without forgetting who
has something to say and without calling on all the students if you need to move on.
The teacher has more control over the pace and flow of discussion. You do not feel as
obligated to call on students immediately, allowing you to continue until the time is right for
a question or comment. You can wait before calling on anyone, allowing more students to
raise their cards. You can wait for students who speak less or have not recently contributed.
And it is an easier and more polite way to pass over the overactive student.
3

When students raise their hands, they seem to turn their attention inward, rehearsing their
questions or comments and tuning out what the teacher or other students are saying. Card-
raising does not seem to produce this effect. In fact, one potential disadvantage of the
method is that students sometimes forget what they wanted to say when they raised their card
(especially if the discussion has moved on).
This method takes some getting used to, by the teacher and the students, but once everyone gets
used to it, it works well and students seem to enjoy it.
4
Most importantly, the method should be
4
used in a way that is not overly controlling and inhibiting. I generally allow students to speak
without raising their cards (or hands) when I ask a question to which I want a quick answer or
when they are responding directly to each other in a debate.
5
But if particular students are
answering all the questions or the debate gets too heated, it allows a way to regain control
(students will rarely speak out as they put up their cards in the way some tend to speak out as
they raise their hands). Finally, if you find you dont like the card-raising method in a particular
class (as I found in one of my graduate classes), you can easily return to hand-raising and you
still have the name cards to allow students to address one another.

Real Socratic Dialogues
People often point to Socrates dialogues as the quintessential method of philosophical
thinking and teaching. How ironic that these dialogues too often depart from what we actually
think of as the Socratic method, since Platos Socrates (especially after the early dialogues)
usually takes over discussions to offer monologues interrupted only by the interlocutors assents
of By all means, Precisely so, and Of course.
If we want to use the Socratic method, then we should guard against falling into a
Socratic lecture about what the right answers or the right questions are. Perhaps the hardest
thing for teachers to do is to watch our students struggle in the waters of confusion until they
learn how to swiminstead we too quickly reach out to save them by bringing them on board
with us and our well-thought-out views. Of course, despite the clich, there are some stupid
questions and some stupid answersor at least irrelevant onesin philosophy as elsewhere, and
we all know there are times when the teacher needs to take command of the discussion. But my
tendency (and I dont think Im alone) is to do precisely what Socrates often does: ask a
5
question, reject a few mistaken answers, and then launch into a lecture on the right answersi.e.,
the various philosophical positions that have been taken on the question.
But since these philosophical positions almost always involve developing some
commonsensical view to its logical conclusion, we can usually get a rudimentary form of the
positions from our commonsensical students. And sometimes we can direct them to advance
these views to their logical conclusions, to see how these conclusions may conflict with other
commonsensical ideas, and to modify and correct their original views (to be fair, this is, of
course, what Socrates is trying to do in his dialogues). Allowing students to struggle to swim in
confusing philosophical waters will take longer than just taking them on board with us. And
time is a real issuewe all must find the proper balance between teaching the content of
philosophy and teaching philosophy as a process. I am usually too impatient myself and fear
sacrificing content. But we should work to allow students the sense of accomplishment they will
feel by playing a real role in the Socratic dialogue rather than the vanishing role Plato often gives
the interlocutors.
My only specific suggestion for how to conduct real Socratic dialogues (other than
reminding yourself about it at regular intervals) is to write up your lecture notes as a series of
questions for the students. Do not include in your notes all the topics, terms, and arguments you
want to cover. If they come up along the way, you can refer to them, perhaps write them on the
board, or use them at the beginning of the next class as a way to summarize and crystallize the
previous discussion. But its better to let the discussion be driven by the questions and the
answers our students give.
For instance, I have lengthy lecture notes on Descartes Meditations. It is tempting to re-
read these notes before class and put up my list of Cartesian terms and arguments on the
6
overhead as I take the students through the material. But it works much better to save these
structured notes for later, and begin instead with a series of questions (the order of which can
vary depending on the way the dialogue goes):
Why does Descartes doubt what he knows? (leads to idea of Foundationalism)
Why does he doubt his senses?
Why does he bring up dreaming? (allows you to clarify that the argument is not just
that we cant tell the difference between dreaming and waking, usually students
initial response, but that dreaming offers a model for the idea that our conscious
perceptions can be radically mistaken)
What is the difference between the dream argument and the evil genius hypothesis?
What does Descartes determine he knows for certain even faced with the possibility
of an evil genius? Is he right about this?
How does the Cogito offer a model for clear and distinct ideas (certain knowledge)?
And so on. By the time you get to the difficult wax argument, the students may at least have the
confidence to look at quotations with you and venture their own interpretations.
Again, this technique is nothing new. But it remains too easy to get frustrated with
students wrong or off-target answers to questions and simply offer them the right answers. We
need to remember, first, that even from wrong or seemingly off-target answers, there is usually
something important to teach, and second, that the students have not read Descartes twenty times
like we have. Telling them what we know it means is not as valuable as having them remind us
of the baffling wonder we felt the first time we read it.


7
Question of the Day
I think that nothing is more important in teaching philosophy than getting the students to
see the relevance of philosophical questions and answers. Since philosophy is relevant, it
becomes a matter of making this clear to the students. One way I try to do this is to get the
students to answer the very basic questions at the heart of philosophy on their own, before they
become immersed inand tainted byreading the answers offered in philosophical texts.
I begin this on the first day when I take attendance. After a brief discussion of what we
think philosophy is, during which I suggest that philosophical questions are often those asked by
curious children and rebellious teenagers, I ask them to answer the roll call by telling us a
philosophical question they can remember having when they were younger. Quite often these
questions will be theological (What came before God?) or quasi-scientific (Why is the sky blue?)
or personal (How do I know if people really like me?) or strange, and quite often they come up
with central philosophical questions, likely ones related to the topics you have on your syllabus:
Do other people see red the same way I see it? What makes things right or wrong? Can animals
think? or the solipsistic one I offer, which I distinctly remember experiencing as I looked out
the school bus when I was 12: How do I know all this, including other people, wasnt just
created by God to test me?
Every subsequent class, I write the assignment on the board beginning with a question
of the day, which they are supposed to think about before they do the assigned readings,
questions like:
Could we be living in The Matrix? How do you know one way or the other?
What is free will? What might threaten it?
Could robots think? Could they feel?
8
What makes you the same person you were when you went to kindergarten?
Are moral claims up to the person (like claims about favorite ice cream flavors)?
Is it always wrong to lie? If not, what makes it OK?
Why do you think God exists (or doesnt exist)?
If God is all-powerful and good, why do so many bad things happen?
In trying to answer these questions, the students prime themselves for the answers they will read
in the texts (and they at least understand what questions the author is trying to address).
Another way I try to get students to see the relevance of philosophy is to offer extra credit
assignments to find media articles, movies, or literature relevant to the questions we are
discussing and write up short explanations of why they are relevant. Having students share what
they find is a nice way to begin the day and remind them of previously covered material.

Critical Responses
Philosophical writing can be very stressful for students. It is nice if they have a chance to
write about the intriguing questions of philosophy without feeling like they have to get the
argument in logical form and offer a devastating objection to one of its premises in lucid prose.
Critical responses (CRs) allow students a less stressful way to write philosophy. They begin by
briefly answering the question of the day (before reading the assigned text). Then, after reading,
they find one particular claim the author makes which they think is wrong, incomplete, or
problematic, and they talk about why. These 1-2 page CRs are graded for effort more than
content (sometimes I just use check marks), they allow me to have a personal dialogue with the
students (I usually mark them only with questions about their points, or ideas on how to advance
their thoughts), and they allow the students to write philosophy without the normal stress
9
associated with writing philosophy. There is a risk that students will use this sort of writing as a
model for their papers, so sometimes I ask for more structured CRs or I clarify in detail the
differences between CRs and their papers when I go over the paper assignment. I usually ask
students to do about 10 CRs in a semester (about one a week, excluding weeks with papers or
tests), which also allows a way to encourage attendance.

Conclusion
I end with a reminder from Stephen Cahn: we should seek input from our colleagues
about our teaching just as we do about our research. By seeing what we do through the eyes of a
well-informed other, we may see what we do in a more objective light. The methods we think
work well, we may learn, upon reflection, do not work so well. The unconscious habits we
cannot see may be brought to light. As Cahn says, A colleague in the back of the room
watching the proceedings with an experienced and understanding eye can provide invaluable
advice that will better our performance. Athletes improve by being observed; so do musicians;
why shouldnt teachers.
6

Just as I offer these methods simply as sparks for reflection on teaching philosophy, the
comments we give and receive from our colleagues about teaching can play the same role they
serve when we discuss our philosophical research with themas sparks for further and deeper
thinking about the ideas. And the question How should I teach philosophy? is surely one
worth further and deeper thinking.
10
Endnotes

1
In my Teaching Philosophy class for graduate students, I tell them to be very careful in deciding how to do
things the first time around, because it may be the way they end up doing it for much of their careerthings from
the layout of syllabi to the first-day lecture on What is philosophy? to writing assignments to the way they write
comments on papers. Habits die hard, so we need to make sure they are good habits. This is one reason I think it is
important to have courses for graduate students on how to teach philosophy, so that they have some time to reflect
on what they will do when they start teaching, they have some exposure to various methods and ideas, and they
engender the habit of reflecting on their teaching habits.

2
The fish-bowl method is a variation using an inner circle of students who are prepared to take the lead in
answering questions and discussion. A student in the outer circle may replace one in the inner circle only after the
one on the inside has contributed to the dis cussion.

3
Though I have no statistical data to support this claim, in my experience this method also serves to lessen gender
imbalances in classroom discussions.

4
Youll need to remind the students to keep their name cards in their notebooks to bring to class every day and to
put them out at the beginning of class.

5
You may want to allow students to lift up their cards to indicate when they have a specific response to a point just
made.

6
Stephen M. Cahn, How to Improve Your Teaching, in In the Socratic Tradition: Essays on Teaching Philosophy,
edited by Tziporah Kasachkoff (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 34.