Opening Day, Fall semester '23

Yet another one! I always love the first class of the semester, almost as much as I love the first game of the baseball season. No errors have yet been committed, no losses registered, no rainouts or cancellations.

I always try to find something a little different to say on Opening Day, while recalling some favorite lines from before. This time I note what Robert Frost said about education...

And what the late Gary Gutting of Notre Dame said in response to the question What is college for?

Colleges and universities have no point if we do not value the knowledge and understanding to which their faculties are dedicated.

This has important consequences for how we regard what goes on in college classrooms.  Teachers need to see themselves as, first of all, intellectuals, dedicated to understanding poetry, history, human psychology, physics, biology — or whatever is the focus of their discipline.  But they also need to realize that this dedication expresses not just their idiosyncratic interest in certain questions but a conviction that those questions have general human significance, even apart from immediately practical applications.  This is why a discipline requires not just research but also teaching.  Non-experts need access to what experts have learned, and experts need to make sure that their research remains in contact with general human concerns. The classroom is the primary locus of such contact.

Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding.  Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “ making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting.  It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have.   Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting.

Students readily accept the alleged wisdom that their most important learning at college takes place outside the classroom.  Many faculty members — thinking of their labs, libraries or studies — would agree.  But the truth is that, for both students and faculty members, the classroom is precisely where the most important learning occurs. Gary Gutting, The Stone 12.14.11

Last time, Jan '23... 

"… Universities are factories of human knowledge. They're also monuments to individual ignorance. We know an incredible amount, but I know only a tiny bit. College puts students in classrooms with researchers who are acutely aware of all they don't know. Professors have a reputation for arrogance, but a humble awareness of the limits of knowledge is their first step toward discovering a little more.

To overcome careerism and knowingness and instill in students a desire to learn, schools and parents need to convince students (and perhaps themselves) that college has more to offer than job training. You're a worker for only part of your life; you're a human being, a creature with a powerful brain, throughout it…" --Jonathan Malesic

The time before, Aug '22...

A new dawn is breaking on us CoPhilosophers... "Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas aut nefas, to try to impart to you some news of the situation..." --WJ, Pragmatism

What I mean when I call myself an Epicurean happiness philosopher...

Epictetus's Opening Day meditation: "Only begin"...

Every semester should begin with eagerness and zest...

A big message we'll ponder this semester, espoused one way or another by all true philosophers, is: think for yourself... but not by yourself. We're here to collaborate, communicate, talk and listen. We're all individuals...

And we're all a lot like Douglas Adams's* whale...

So, shall we hit the ground running? And not say, like that jaded bowl of petunias, "Oh no, not again!"

*Also, speaking of HHGTG: "42" is not the answer to the ultimate question of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. But it is the uniform number of a great and courageous athlete. Extra credit to the first student in each section who can name him.