Teaching

Vulnerability

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

Several years ago, I read a fascinating article by David Dobbs called “The Science of Success,” in which he discusses the influence of certain genetic factors on social/psychological development. Dobbs recounts the studies of Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, who set out to test a dominant hypothesis of psychiatry and behavioral science known as the “stress diathesis” or “genetic…

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Dear Student, At The End Of The Semester

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments
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Merit

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

The first text I assign in my social and political philosophy course is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “The Lottery in Babylon.” In it, Borges’ narrator tells the story of his former home, Babylon, where (over the course of many years) a lottery evolves from being a voluntary game of chance into a mandatory…

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Utility

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Ethics, J.S. Mill, Philosophy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

Roughly 90% of the courses I teach are in moral and political philosophy, which means I am regularly given cause to lecture on utilitarianism. In my experience, almost all students arrive in the classroom as what I call “default utilitarians.” I say “default” because I think, in most cases, their’s is not so much a…

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Recruiting Philosophy Majors

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

One of my favorite things to do at the end of the semester involves sending emails to those particularly excellent students I had in class and trying to recruit them to the Philosophy major.  I don’t think I tell students often enough during the regular term that they’re doing good work, or that they have…

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Technology and Human Values

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Ethics, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

If this were a post on Buzzfeed or Upworthy or some other such listicle-driven site, the thumbnail caption would read: “You won’t BELIEVE the AMAZING things these COLLEGE STUDENTS did in their PHILOSOPHY class! Check it out!” That would be a 100% true description, but I will attempt to be more measured in what follows….

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The Case for Having Students Memorize Poetry

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

For the last couple of years, my policy with regard to students’ “extra credit” opportunities was entirely focused on incentivizing attendance for out-of-class lectures. If students attended a lecture and wrote a 2-page response essay, they could receive up to 5pts on their midterm or final exams.  If they attended and asked a question, they…

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On Teaching Our Incapacity To Unexperience

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Aesthetics, Ethics, Film, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, SPEP, Teaching, Thinking in Images, Trigger Warnings, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

They say you can’t “unring a bell.” It’s an analogy that is often used to illustrate our incapacity to un-experience things, to erase lived-experiences from our bodies and minds. What I discovered recently is how particularly true that is in the classroom. A few weeks ago in my Philosophy and Film course, we screened Werner…

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How It Will Go, Episode 5: Teaching J.S. Mill

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson HIWG, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

This is the fifth installment of my series How It Will Go, documenting the regularity of students’ responses to certain figures/texts and, in the occasional rare instance that it happens, noting whatever variations I witness. Today’s episode: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism Context in which I teach this figure text: Like Kant, I teach some variation of…

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Trigger Warnings, Spoiler-Alerts, Philosophy and Film

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Film, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Over the last couple of years, the practice of including “trigger warnings” on course syllabi or articulating them aloud in classes that include potentially disturbing, offensive or triggering content has become the institutional norm, if not also a requirement (as it is more or less becoming at many institutions). What detractors remain don’t really question the fundamental advisability…

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