My Pedagogical Philosophy

Though I have never formally studied pedagogical theory or philosophy, several years' experience in academe has exposed me to an array of pedagogical approaches: one emphasizes raising students' self-esteem, another focuses on maximizing students' competitiveness in the job market, a third stresses indoctrination in certain "invincible truths" propagated by some higher authority (political, legal, ecclesiastical). I hold to a more old-fashioned view: namely, that the primary duty of a teacher is TO TEACH -- and through his or her teaching help foster those qualities of mind which will enable students to continue their intellectual development long after they have left the university campus. Far be it from me to denigrate facts, statistics, examples, and all other concrete data essential to the study of virtually any academic discipline; but one need hardly go to a university -- or, in this era of the Internet, even a library -- to gather such information. A university classroom, however, can offer participants an almost unique opportunity to develop and exercise that capacity for critical thinking without which no individual or communal advancement worthy of the name is possible.

I say "participants" because, to my mind, learning (in an institutional setting like the university) should be a cooperative endeavor, an ongoing process of constructive dialogue between students and teachers as well as among students themselves. Over two millennia after his death, Socrates remains an unsurpassed exemplar of this process. Though perhaps not quite as infallible, philosophically, as his Platonic interlocutors were wont to profess, Socrates as a teacher exemplifies an ideal that has lost its resonance in this "age of the expert": that of encouraging individuals to seek "the truth" for themselves rather than just blindly accept whatever emanates from their supposed intellectual superiors. Yes, expertise has its place in the classroom, and I myself at the lectern will make frequent reference to the fruits of my own reading and reflection. But teachers should always be wary of measuring their ultimate success by the number of disciples they leave behind.

If Socrates epitomizes my preferred "method" of teaching, it is a much later educational thinker, John Henry Newman, who most eloquently expresses my ideal of a university. For Newman conceived of the university as above all the institutional setting most conducive to fulfillment of the Socratic injunction to know oneself. Granted that Newman shared the gender and class biases of his age with respect to who "merited" higher education -- granted, too, Newman's wholly subjective conviction that a "proper" education would inevitably lead its recipients to embrace his own particular religious creed -- he recognized, and celebrated, the value of knowledge for its own sake -- or, to be more precise, for the intellectual, social, and moral welfare of the individual who "knows" and thus, ultimately, for the good of the larger community to which all individuals belong. The contrast with today's university, where teachers and students alike place primary, often exclusive emphasis on the tangible or vocational benefits of whatever they study, could not be more striking. That, however, is no reason to treat yesterday's ideal as merely so much extra fodder for tomorrow's dissertations.

The above allusions to ancient Greece and Victorian Britain notwithstanding, my thoughts on education derive chiefly from personal experience and education. As such, I lay no claim to "absolute impartiality" or "scientific detachment." But I do believe that, in education as in so much else, some personal viewpoints have more to recommend them than others. For all the undoubted technological and economic and political advances that have been made over the past century, nobody has bettered Socrates as a practitioner or Newman as a theorist of what educators should strive to accomplish. That two such renowned pedagogues, lacking a PhD and other "professional credentials," would be spurned by most contemporary academics as unworthy of joining their ranks, offers an all too ironic commentary on just how far educational standards have fallen.