Matthew Kreutter, one of my seniors, just told me I should teach a course on “Important Shit” and everyone should take it. LOL
It came about because my senior “Philosophy and Literature” course spent the first half of the term talking about epistemology, truth, and knowledge, some of the components of “traditional philosophy.”
To me, although many/most philosophy courses stop with that traditional material, unless you just enjoy the ideas (which I do, btw), that’s only the first half of any course whose title involves “love of wisdom.” It seems to me that the course should then go on to ask the “So, what?” question–why is spending time thinking about these things important? So, that’s what the second half of the Philosophy and Lit course has been. And we’ve read things like Appiah’sCosmopolitanism and extracts Cornel West’s The American Evasion of Philosophy.
I think it was in response to my comment about needing to think about why things were important and what their implications were that the student said, “In other words, the important shit.” Then he paused a second and said, “You should teach a course in that. I would have taken it.”
On another note, I’m going tomorrow to Chicago to a meeting involving a number of independent schools. Every student who’s asked what I’m talking smiles or laughs when I tell them the title of my session is “Disruptive Education.”