Teaching is more like stoking a fire, and less like putting pebbles in a pale.

With the exception of philosophy books, which are fun to read anyway, my goal this semester is to never bring work home. If that means that I stay at school late into the night, or come in on Fridays or Saturdays, so be it.

Anything that is strictly school work, whether it be writing a lesson plan, grading student papers, or managing administrative and committee work, it will all be done at school. My home is for leisure and actually doing philosophy.

Whenever I bring work home, my productivity falls anyway. My work and life get blended together, and both work and leisure take a hit. By constructing this boundary, I hope to increase productivity and my personal happiness, which will be good for both myself and my students.

Time and time again, I have told my students or myself that I will accomplish such and such after classes. After class, I go home with the intent to do the work. But then I get tired on the bus, I get home, and I can’t concentrate. If I am at school at 9pm, and have a few things to post on blackboard, I may as well just stay the extra few minutes and get it done.

Two weeks ago, I read Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing. It came out in the early 1970s. An amazing novel– probably the best of the summer. It was dripping with effective symbolism, and had a compelling story to boot.

I only mean to update and will keep this brief. The three weeks between Summer and Fall semester were filled with two five-day conferences and four days of student registration. I filled in the cracks with some precious time with friends, the closest of whom will be leaving in seven days to Argentina for a full year.

Today is the first day of classes. Two Ethics and a logic course today, and two Philosophy of Religion courses tomorrow. I am excited, but not as well-prepared as I had hoped to be. Until yesterday, I was also not psychologically prepared at all. After a pleasant brunch and walk with friends (something that I do not do enough), I went to my downtown office, cleaned, organized, prepared, read, and got ready.

I did not sleep well last night, but I was up early enough to go to the gym and run five miles. With end-of-semester stress, traveling, and conferences, I have not been good about the gym for the last few weeks. I managed a couple times per week, and last week I managed four visits. I saw a sharp spike in my five-mile run time: from 39 min and 25 seconds last month to 45 minutes last week (I just walked the last .5 mile, although quickly on an incline).  Today I managed to turn the tide and broke my record of one month ago, coming in at 39 minutes and 10 seconds, or 7 min 49 seconds per mile.

Ah well, that is all. Nothing reflective or philosophical for now. I believe it is helpful to get this direct post completed, because I believe it will get me in the right mind-set for better posts in the coming weeks.

The summer semester closes this week, and as always I believe it is prudent to reflect on my original plan, how well it was maintained, whether or not it was successful, and what changes I will make for the Fall semester.

Overall, I am very happy with the Summer Semester. At the end of Spring, I was troubled by the organization and record keeping methods I was currently using, and worked hard to change it for the summer. This is “behind the scenes” and I do not know if a student enrolled in both my spring and summer classes could tell the difference. However, I certainly could. I was in near panic mode for the last six weeks of Spring, where panic did not touch me in the summer. Of course, the summer semester is only half as long as the spring, and maybe that has something to do with it as well. Nevertheless, I will continue using my summer methods for grade keeping, attendance, and other record keeping.

But that is the boring stuff, the stuff that is only a tool for my higher goals. My higher goals are to get students to think more critically about their own views, to expose them to the alternate and sophisticated views of great philosophers, to engage them in conversation and improve their conversational skills, to make them better critical readers of difficult texts, and better presenters of their own ideas through written argumentative essays. To re-examine methods of thinking and be able to frame a question or problem which they intend to solve: the essence of self-directed thinking. Finally, it is to instill a tolerance of ambiguity, to break the habit of rushing to answers too quickly, and be a little bit more comfortable with the irritating sensation of doubt.

Did I achieve these goals? Did my students achieve these goals?

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Continue reading “Reflections on Summer Semester: Course Planning and Execution” →

I managed to read two small novels this weekend. I have not done that in a long time, and it felt good. Most of my reading is consumed by philosophy and teaching essays, and student’s essays.

The first novel I had has been sitting on my shelf for a very long time: Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs. I have read a few books by McEwan: Atonement, Amsterdam, and Saturday. All of them were excellent. Black Dogs did not disappoint. It is narrated by a man who, at the beginning of his life, found himself addicted to becoming friends with his friends’ parents, because his own parents had died when he was 8. Also, he finds himself caught between the one side of believing too much, or not enough. The book is mostly set when he is in his forties, after he had finally met a woman whom he married in his thirties. The focus of the story, however, is not about him or his wife, but about his wife’s parents, Bernard and June. June believes too much, Bernard doesn’t believe enough. The narrator (Jeremy?) is exploring the lives of his parents-in-law, who had split a very long time ago but were nevertheless addicted to the memory of one another. Throughout the entire story, an episode of their youth is hinted at: June’s encounter with a pair of black dogs, whom June sees as the embodiment of evil or a manifestation of the devil (sort of). Bernard doesn’t understand what she sees, and the split begins from there.

The other book I read was Paul Harding’s Tinkers. Harding is a brand new novelist, but his book managed to pickup a Pulitzer Prize nonetheless. Tinkers focuses on a retired clock-repairman who is about to die, surrounded by his wife, children and grand-children, and the man’s father, who was an Appalachian traveling salesman.  The book moves back and forth between the two lives, and it is very well written.

I recommend both if you feel the urge for a good, well-written, thought-provoking story that is nonetheless not too heavy.

On April 19, I posted on this blog that I had been working on my run time and was currently at 5-miles in 40 min 15 sec. I took quite a hiatus after that, due to end of semester stress and lack of discipline. But I’ve been back at the gym regularly for over a month (starting at 3 times per week, and now up to 5 or 6 workouts). Today, I managed to break my previous record, at 5 miles in 39 min 25 sec. A 50 sec drop, and 5 miles at 7 min 55 sec per mile. It is still not an excellent time, but I’m proud of the progress.

As for my workouts in general, I’ve been placing a heavy emphasis on cardio, placing weight training as a second priority. My goal right now is to increase my energy efficiency and endurance, and cut away the beer belly I’ve accumulated over the years. At this rate, another six weeks of making cardio the priority will probably get me to my goal. At that point, I will switch my priority to weight training.

My cardio routine places the priority on running, and second place goes to the stair climber. I will run on the first day after a break, then use the stair climber on the second, then back to running, etc., until I take another break.

In the mean time, I’m still working on weights, but only after I’ve exhausted my body with a run or stairclimbers. My muscles are slowly getting reacquainted to the work, and progress is going well. Today I did my first pull-ups in a very long time. I managed to hit 8 complete pull-ups (completely locked arms when down, chin above bar when up, no swinging). I was at 29 when I was a 21 year old Marine.

I am making physical fitness my priority now. Not because it is the most important thing in my life, though. Being a good teacher is the most important thing in my life: it is my purpose. But when I force myself out of bed and to the gym at 6am, and when my body is in excellent shape, I am better at managing the rest of my life. And so it is the practical priority, while the ethical priority is in teaching and learning.

Teaching should not be this much fun.

I suppose this is simply the cost of still beginning my professional career: I have no time. Well, I have no time that also has energy. I waste time, but it’s usually because I’m drained more than anything else.

Over the past month and a half, I finished the Fall semester, traveled to Bemidji, MN for a week to see old friends and professors, and made it back to Chicago just in time to start two more classes for the summer semester. I needed the money, but I really hope to scrimp and save enough so that I don’t need to teach next summer. That’s not to say I regret teaching this summer. On the contrary, I spent a lot of time over my short break to re-evaluate my courses and how they are structured. By the time June 9 hit, I was eager to begin the courses to see if my changes would work. And so far, they have worked very well, at least from my perspective. I really want to strike a nice balance between a motivating rigidness and a feeling of openness that nurtures creativity and freedom of expression in class. I am trying to take the best of the lessons I have pulled from the Marine Corps, a legion of philosophers commenting on knowledge and human nature, the excellence and faults of all of my previous professors, the research and commentary of those who focus on teaching, and, of course, my own considerable teaching experience (Three years of teaching now! Can you believe it?).  Every semester I try new things and am given the opportunity to learn something new (as well as making new mistakes). This semester is turning out nicely, and I feel as though, compared to last semester, I have hit my stride. The biggest issue is still managing my free time. I still “play” too much on the weekends and evening time…although it may not be a productive form of play. Instead of buying a bottle of wine and drinking the whole thing while staring out the window (as a philosopher, I’ll still count this as professional development, so back off!) I would benefit more from reading more books and getting to bed at a decent time, so I have more time to hit the gym in the morning. Still, I’m better than I was, and hopefully not as good as I will be. In short, although I often don’t feel like I’m maturing, when I compare my behavior now to, say, three years ago, the growth is plain to see, and exciting

Anyway, I am rambling now.  I’ve realized over the past weeks that this blog has sort of gone astray from its original paradigm of the “natural causes” of the mind. I”ll try to get back to that in the future.

For now, an update of my reading lists:

1. I’m still plodding away at “Freedom Just Around the Corner.” During my last post, I was making decent progress at one chapter per day (roughly 30 pages). That has slowed to half a chapter per week. I am currently just past the halfway point. Still excellent, just not enough time. Things related to class, and especially philosophy and teaching, become the priority. American History will need to be patient.

2. A long time ago, I posted an excerpt from “Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750,” by Jonathan Israel, which makes the case that Spinoza was far more of a central figure in the enlightenment than he’s usually given credit for. Of course, as is well known, philosophers of his age and through Kant make virtually no reference to Spinoza. But, according to Israel, this is primarily because of two things. One, which is the obvious reason: he’s a Jew, and the European attitude of the time was strongly anti-semitic. Even the enlightened, open-minded ones were aware what affect their writings would have on popular opinion if they spoke favorably of a heretical Jew. They didn’t want their ideas to be distracted by other issues. Second, is that Spinoza’s ideas were incredibly radical on their own: necessary determinism, a stark materialism (yes, mind-body aspect, but nothing non-physical can interfere with the the physical, abolishing all supernatural, divine, and mind-interaction explanations, so it is, in scientific practice, a strict materialism), revolutionary ideas on biblical interpretation (see next entry), and an early advocate of democracy, freedom of speech, and tolerance. With these incredibly radical ideas (for the time), it is not just that he was a Jew that made him unpopular. Israel argues, by going through legions of less-famous thinkers, that the ideas and writings of Spinoza were indeed powerful and respected: they simply spread through social circles, letter-writing, and lay hidden in the paradigms of lecturing professors. Over time, Spinoza’s ideas had changed the scene of European thinkers, and by the time Hegel comes on the scene (close on the heals of Kant, who only mentioned Spinoza once, and in a very disparaging way), Hegel declares that “one must first be a Spinozist before one can be a philosopher.” Or something like that. That’s not a direct quote.

3. “How to Read the Bible,” by James Kugel. This isn’t something new-age or evangelical Christian bull. Kugel was a professor of Hebrew studies at Harvard, and this book is the result of a lifetime of scholarly research. It is a book on the history and practice of Biblical interpretation, from the ancients to the modern era. It is interesting in that (A) he shows the different ways in which the “metaphorical” vs. “literal” interpretations have played out, (B) he focuses entirely on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, (C) discusses the various unwritten assumptions that have worked on the minds of various interpretative models, (D) spends about 40 pages going over the history and these interpretive notes, before (E) spending the next 600 pages going over each story of the bible individually, and showing how different interpretive models have read each story, explaining why along the way.

One interesting surprise was an important nod to Hobbes and Spinoza, who both wrote about Biblical intepretation (ironic, considering how they are both often considered to be atheists, and both certainly believe that common notions of God have more to do with the imagination of humans than truth). I had no idea that was coming, but it was cool. Kugel notes Hobbes’ revolutionary assertion that, “It is therefore sufficiently evident that the five books of Moses were written after his time, though how long after it be not so manifest.” Kugel goes on to say, “WHile both these thinkers contributed significantly to the  seventeeth century’s wrestling with the Bible, it was Spinoza who ultimately had the greater influence on biblical scholars themselves. In a few pages of his remarkable little book the Tractatus Theologo-Politicus, Spinoza outlined a new proposal for how the Bible was to be  read, and this program became the marching orders of biblical scholars for the next three centuries.”  These proposals can be summarized to five main points (according to Kugel, and I’m summarizing his points):

a. “Scripture is to be understood by scripture alone.” One can never interpret the bible according to traditional interpretations.

b. “In order to understand Scripture, we must understand all the peculiarities of its language and its world of ideas, and not impose on it our own, later conceptions… We should thus ‘take every precaution against the undue influence not only of our own prejudices, but of our faculty of reason.’ ”

c. We accept what the scripture means what it says–even when it disagrees with what we think it should say– except when the bible contradicts itself. For example, Moses describes God as a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) and elsewhere as having no likeness (Spinoza’s interpretation of Exod 20:4). We WOULD accept that God resembles a consuming fire, but since it contradicts the other statement we take “fire” to be metaphorical. However, Moses also says that God is a jealous God (Exod 20:5) and nowhere contradicts that statement. Ergo…

d. The books themselves must be investigated, understood how they were put together, the lives of the author, their personality traits, etc., in order to understand what the author intended.

e. We must recognize that the prophets frequently contradict one another. We must therefore concentrate on what they do agree with.

I do not think that all of this says that Spinoza therefore believes the bible to be “true,” given everything I’ve read by and about Spinoza. However, Spinoza is frequently skeptical of how people’s minds lead us astray, and like Bacon and Descartes before him, is interested in devising methods to avoid the prejudices of our minds. Keep in mind, of course, that Spinoza is writing at the dawn of the scientific era, a few decades after Galileo’s discovery, and contemporary with Isaac Newton. That there should be methods that help us acquire objectivity, and the creation of such methods, was a central concern and attribute of the Enlightenment.

4, “Mechanics: From Aristotle to Einstein,” by Michael Crowe. Both a history and philosophy of science book, this goes through the scientific revolutions concerning theories of mechanics over the ages. Very interesting, but it involves a lot of mathematics and science, subjects in which I am very rusty. I’m reading it to supplement my readings for the Enlightenment class, but also to help me understand the philosophy of science. He describes mechanics as “that area of knowledge that treats of motions and tendencies to motions in material bodies. Practitioners of this form of mechanics deal with such topics as how or why falling bodies or thrown baseballs or launched rockets move as they do, or cease moving.” (he also gives the ‘common’ definition concerning machines, for which the practitioner is a mechanic, not a scientist or philosopher, but notes that is not the subject of this book, of course).  Interesting, but I feel it is too narrow. I’d like to explore this later (since I really need to get back to work), but when Hobbes and Spinoza breakdown emotions into a very small set of distinct emotional forces (appetite and aversion, coupled with an idea, for example), the anatomy of emotions very much seems to capture something essential to mechanics. Push and pull, coupled with a physical body, for example.

5. Finally, I’m reading Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series, a classic of sci-fi. It’s fun. It’s smart, but I refuse to say anything else about it. Some forms of fun should just be fun without thought.

Gosh dernit. Now I’m talking about how it’s sometimes important to not talk about things. Bye.

I’m about 47 hours away from submitting grades for the Spring semester. Then sweet freedom! I’ve got a small library of books that I’m plunging into directly, beginning with Freedom Just Around the Corner, by Walter McDougall.  It is an American history book that runs from 1585  (when England began expanding into America) to 1828 (when Andrew Jackson ran for President).  It is the first in a trilogy of American history books McDougall has written in the past years. I received the recommendation from a friend who is actually one of McDougall’s few graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania. After reading the preface and first chapter, I can begin to see why my friend is excited about this book. From the preface:

“The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years. If some ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman, were transported in time from 1600 into the present, the crew would be amazed by our technology and the sheer numbers of people on the globe, but the array of civilizations would be recognizable…..   The only continent that would astound the Renaissance time-travelers would be North America, which was primitive and nearly vacant as late as 1607, but which today hosts the mightiest, richest, most dynamic civilization in history–a civilization, moreover, that perturbs the trajectories of all other civilizations just by existing.”

This book was just published in 2004, so you can see what a punch in the face it is to contemporary American academic. American history once ignored or devalued the Native American tribes, but certainly as long as I’ve been in college (2001) and probably much longer, I’ve seen the reaction. That is, whenever the English colonies are brought up, the tremendous crime of taking from the Natives is put in the spotlight.  My impression is that McDougall chose to write this American history in order to cut through the trends and reactions, and to simply write what he sees. In the preface and first chapter, he admits the good, bad and quirky aspects of American history and character, and calls out many contemporary historians as either being too self-congratulatory or too critical. I hope it is telling that, in the preface, he states the following:

“I also imagined special features that might justify a new US history. I wanted to pay more attention to all regions and states so that Kansas, for instance, would not exist only when it was “bleeding.” The Midwest, in particular, has received far less attention that it deserves in synthetic histories, while the “new Western history” demands a correction of traditional interpretations of the frontier. I hoped to be genuinely inclusive by making room not only for African, Asian, and Hispanic Americans, but for European ethnic groups such as Germans, Irish, Italian, Slavs, Scandinavians, and Jews. I meant to treat all these as people rather than icons, recognizing that no American is “just” a member of a group, but a person with loyalties to kinfolk, region, occupation, religion, and political party as well as ethnicity.” (xiii) (Bolding is my edit.)

In the first chapter, McDougall set out to introduce “Americans” as fitting four Archetypes introduced by some great American literature. In Melville’s The Confidence-Man, we find the American as hustler/trickster. In Twain’s A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, we see the practical/ingenious American.  In Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, we see the American struggling with Freedom versus Individualism, and how they are both challenged by city living (such a strange way for me to look at it, since I came to Chicago for freedom, lost it, then started building myself as an Individual.  Finally, William Safire’s Scandalmonger, which sees Americans as a unique, naturally “hardball” political creature.

To wrap this up, I’ll leave you with a sizable chunk from near the end of the first chapter. I liked it a lot.

“What if the United States, as suggested in the preface, is a permanent revolution, a society in constant flux, a polity devoted by general consensus to fleeing as quickly as possible into the future? In that case, we would expect every period of American history to be washed by turgid, overlapping waves of old and new forms of “creative corruption” at the federal, state, and local levels.”

“In a later book, [Samuel] Huntington examined the gap between the ideals of the American creed and the sometimes grotesque realities of American life. This gap is not to be wondered at; it is a natural consequence of ideals themselves. If Americans were dedicated to the proposition that men (and women) are endowed with no rights at all, with life a matter of getting all you can at others’ expense, then no one would accuse them of democracy. But given their high ideals Americans can cope with the gap in any of four ways. he hypocrite ignores the reality. The cynic dismisses ideals as, at best, useful myths. The complacent just admits the gap and moves on. The moralist seeks to narrow it through religious uplift or social reform. But whichever mood may be prevalent, every era of American history is defined by disharmony: “America is not a lie: it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.”

“What is novel about Americans, as their novelists repeatedly teach, is not that they are better or worse than peoples of other places and times (100 percent of whose genes they share), but that they are freer than other peoples to pursue happiness and yet are no happier for it. Therein lies the source of America’s disappointment. Only free people can disappoint and be disappointed by the discovery that worldly ideals cannot be advanced except by worldly means. That raises the historical question: how did it happen that Americans managed to seize such freedom, conceive such ideals, achieve such success, yet grieve over such disappintment? Did they think themselves somehow exempt from the curses of Adam and Eve?”

I have struggled with my relationship with America. As a Persian American, I understood at an early age that American freedom and quality of life is real and valuable. I was just also naive enough to believe it was a simple one-sided story. So I joined the Marines and was certainly willing to fight for these freedoms if necessary. But after four years of seeing the inside of the Corps, and then getting a more full education in American history in college, I became much more skeptical. My patriotism withered away to nothing. But the rampant cynicism amongst many of my friends didn’t make much sense either. America has committed great feats of hypocrisy, but that doesn’t make our freedoms and quality of life any less real: just more limited and nuanced.  Furthermore, I don’t take the question of the “good” of America to be merely academic or some cheesy internal search to find out what America “really means” to me. The United States is my community. As for all of us, it is where I live, work, and contribute to others. Especially as a community college instructor, I am plugged in to the ideas that influence our community, and I desperately want my thoughts on the subject better investigated and ordered than they are now. McDougall’s introductory remarks are encouraging, and I’m looking forward to reading this book thoroughly.

But for now, back to grading.