Teacher's Guide - Class Planning Guide

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The Contract
Part 1 - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] | Part 2 - [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] | Part 3 - [12[13] [14] [15]

The Contract

Students may have read this before the first class meeting. It is important to get the atmosphere right from the very beginning, to make it clear that while you are the leader and decide how the course is going, they have to do a lot of the talking. (It's as if you are playing chess with them. They expect you to be playing white to their black, so that you take all the early initiatives. But in fact you are playing black, and while you can determine the configuration of the board at later stages of the game, you do this by skillful reactions to the initiatives they take.) They have to provide the materials for you and the rest of the class to work on, so in the first meeting you should get them to talk. The arguments (1)-(6) and the possible reactions to them described on pages xiv-xv can be used for this. If you do not expect enough of them to have copies of the book by this meeting you could photocopy the pages with claims (1) to (6) and distribute them at the class. Give them time to read and understand the six arguments, and then have them fill out the Ridiculous-to-True table. They must do this individually, before they see one another's answers. (There is an important general fact here, which is worth explaining to them. We are all affected more deeply by other people's opinions than we consciously admit. So if they know one another's answers before writing them down the result will be a smaller variation between different people's answers, and this will lead to a less interesting discussion.) Now you have to ascertain quickly which are the arguments on which there are the greatest divisions of opinion, that is, for which ones a significant proportion of the class has a very different reaction to another significant proportion. (So if 50% rates (1) as "Ridiculous" and 50% as "True," that counts as a maximum split, and if a couple of people class (2) as "Impossible" and a couple as "On the way to truth" that is a pretty insignificant split.) Choose two or at most three of the largest splits, and simply point out that it is interesting that they disagree.

Ask them what the roots of their disagreement could be, and what other disagreements are making them react in such different ways. Very likely this will be enough to get things rolling. If they are in an analytical rather than a combative mood, ask them what kinds of consideration could resolve the disagreement. Compare splits: are the same people on different sides on two different splits? Why? If most people on one side of a split are on the same side in another, look for someone who isn't: ask this person to explain why, although they agree with one bunch of people on the one issue, they agree with another bunch of people on the other.

Right from the beginning you must be picking up names and personalities. It helps tremendously if the students in the class learn one another's names. So if you address them by name and encourage them to address one another by name the process can begin. You can go round the room asking each student to state one fact about his or her self that others can use to remember them by. You should take notes of the general pre-philosophical positions that they seem to be expressing. Useful but not very subtle labels are: science-worshiper, conventionally religious, mystic, romantic, realist. Even by this class you may be noticing some people who express their views so confidently that they may inhibit others, or some who seem to be sharp but not confident. In this section I say that reactions to (2) and (6) are likely to indicate differences in "ways of thinking." One thing I mean to include in this is that people who have faith that some standard source of belief, whether it be science or religion or something else, are likely to differ on these questions from people who have a more mystical or individualistic attitude to knowledge.

I take the six arguments to focus on questions of how much faith we can put in some standard sources of information - science, religion, common sense - whether there are facts that we have no good way of knowing, and how to separate real fact from what we conventionally decide to believe. These are too abstract to match the diagnoses of their disagreements that the students are likely to produce, but they may be useful when the students find themselves struggling for words and you have to complete their half-expressed thoughts. (It is worth doing this quite explicitly. A student says "Oh, I guess that doesn't make much sense; I can't really say what I think about this," and you suggest an interpretation of what the student managed to say, adding "but I may be completely misunderstanding you." Then the student may be able to express what they wanted to, by saying in what ways they were not trying to say what you said.)

If the class seems very sophisticated and unconfused, you can try to shift the focus from the conclusions of the six arguments to the arguments themselves. "Yes, let's suppose that different people have radically different color experiences, but does the argument given here give a good reason for thinking that? Should it convince someone who didn't accept the conclusion?" This is a move that will confuse many students new to philosophy though, so you should take this line only if you are very confident about the students.

At this class or beforehand you should have given the students a written program of which readings they should be doing for which class meetings for the rest of the course. (This doesn't prevent you changing the program during the course, though you have to give them notice and tell them of the new program.) If there is a course website you should put the program on it. One advantage of doing this is that it takes away excuses from those who have not done the reading.
A discussion-centered course can make good use of email. You can pick one section each week and have students email you a short response to it. Then you will have time to consider how to weave the responses into a structured discussion. You will also discuss which of the more timid students actually have good things to say. The responses must be short because otherwise you will get swamped by them. Another technique is to have students email responses to each other, according to some constant or shifting pairing up of the class, copying them to you. It is very easy for this latter kind of plan to become chaotic though, if the instructions are not simple and easily followed and the plan does not survive the instructions being imperfectly followed. Your university may have a system whereby students in a course can post comments that other students in the course can read. If so you can make use of it. I mention below which sections I think are most suitable for email discussion.