One thought that occurred to me is that even if different graduate programs have different goals, they might end up looking very similar. For example, suppose for simplicity that there are two possible goals for a graduate program: research or teaching. You might think that these two programs would look very different, one teaching its students how to be good researchers, the other how to be good teachers. But I wonder if both programs would end up looking very similar, if not nearly identical, because maybe the best way to train good teachers, at the margin, is by teaching them how to be good researchers.
I included “at the margin”, because I’m thinking about students who come into the program know very little about philosophy. Maybe the best way to train them to teach philosophy to others is to teach *them* more philosophy, and force them to think about it critically to the point where they can write critical papers about it and have their own novel ideas. In other words, they are being taught to be good researchers. On this model, you might call “teaching the next generation of philosophy teachers” self-effacing: in practice, it just collapses into teaching them to be researchers.
For someone who knows a ton of philosophy already, yes maybe the best way to make that person into a more effective philosophy teacher is with instruction that explicitly focuses on pedagogy, but for most students, they need more philosophy content, not teaching content.
Relatedly, philosophy faculty will be most able to teach philosophy content, not teaching content. So even if the ‘self-effacing’ hypothesis is wrong, there will be a heavy structural bias towards teaching more philosophy content. If we really wanted our students to learn teaching strategies, we should hire specialists in that area, which is likely so demanding that they will not also have any special expertise in philosophy.
An unrelated small point: back when I was at CU Boulder, a full professor there, now long since retired, once admitted that the reason they have a master’s program (not the PhD program) is so that faculty could teach graduate seminars more frequently. The MA students pay full freight, and as long as they’re not total dummies they would get in, to help populate graduate seminars. His explicit criterion for admitting these students was: “will their presence in my graduate seminar make it better or worse?”
Almost everyone I know who went thru elite graduate programs thinks like this: teaching good teachers just is making them good researchers. I just don’t think that’s true. Forget about research and teaching for a minute. The Generalist-Specialist distinction is very real, and training to be a Generalist is different from a good Specialist. True in medicine, physics, sports, business too. I think better teacher-oriented programs would be more Generalist than Specialist. Of course there are exceptions to this. I think many good Generalists just aren’t producing peer-review publishable stuff because that’s a game biased toward specialists. The paradigm case of this is Agnes Callard.
Yes, good point. I was thinking more of the first half, classroom part of the graduate program, not the second half where you write the dissertation. And yes, the dissertation part would not be very useful for future teachers, especially relative to other things they could be learning for those ~3 years.
I guess there I’d say a big part of the problem is just credential inflation. We could—right now—graduate teachers just after their coursework is done, so they’d have the equivalent of a master’s degree, and they would be just as effective as the teachers we graduate after completing a PhD dissertation. (Of course, those teachers would be even better if instead of a dissertation they learned even more teaching-specific stuff.) But the PhD signals something above and beyond a MA degree, so they all have to chase that too, which is unfortunate.
Yeah, Princeton was (is still?) really narrow and focused on research specialization, compared to other schools. But I guess that’s a step in the direction you favor, right? That Princeton is specialized in churning out researchers, whereas schools lower on the PGR give their students a more broad-based education.
Excellent. In the time-honored philosophical tradition of focusing on the least important part of what you are saying and offering a tiny nitpick comment, I offer this: Federer used a one-handed backhand.
Asking “where have all the Parfits gone?” is like asking “where have all the Andre Agassis gone?” circa 2002. And the answer, ironically, is in Reasons and Persons: the Agassis and Parfits were casualties of optimization (i.e. the repugnant conclusion). Tennis, thankfully, escaped the Z-world; it had the good sense not to put Ivanisevic, Sampras, and all the big men with monster serves in charge of the rules. But philosophy is still optimizing (i.e. sliding from A to Z), piling distinctions on top of distinctions, each time making things a little bit clearer and each time deepening the worry that something very important has been lost.
The argument ignores the problem of tenure track positions at even mid-level colleges and universities that require publications. Too few institutions value teaching enough to make it the primary or singular criterion for promotion. Teaching track positions are great and should be more respected, better compensated and more numerous. PhD programs could be tailored accordingly.
I take it they are all in the USA. I live in France, educated in Scotland, mostly lived in England. I know a lot of French cleaners who could out-argue this lot. Not the star names and the lit. But thinking, reflecting, deeply questioning. It's in their language , in their education. Of course there are confused, simplistic folks. I mean generally. You only see it when you're in it. And only a strip of water separates the UK from France. But then the river and the sea define a genocide. 'Philosophers' as depicted above are shams. They should spend a year in a French cleaning agency. Then they'd know what thinking is as well as praxis.
This is great, Barry.
One thought that occurred to me is that even if different graduate programs have different goals, they might end up looking very similar. For example, suppose for simplicity that there are two possible goals for a graduate program: research or teaching. You might think that these two programs would look very different, one teaching its students how to be good researchers, the other how to be good teachers. But I wonder if both programs would end up looking very similar, if not nearly identical, because maybe the best way to train good teachers, at the margin, is by teaching them how to be good researchers.
I included “at the margin”, because I’m thinking about students who come into the program know very little about philosophy. Maybe the best way to train them to teach philosophy to others is to teach *them* more philosophy, and force them to think about it critically to the point where they can write critical papers about it and have their own novel ideas. In other words, they are being taught to be good researchers. On this model, you might call “teaching the next generation of philosophy teachers” self-effacing: in practice, it just collapses into teaching them to be researchers.
For someone who knows a ton of philosophy already, yes maybe the best way to make that person into a more effective philosophy teacher is with instruction that explicitly focuses on pedagogy, but for most students, they need more philosophy content, not teaching content.
Relatedly, philosophy faculty will be most able to teach philosophy content, not teaching content. So even if the ‘self-effacing’ hypothesis is wrong, there will be a heavy structural bias towards teaching more philosophy content. If we really wanted our students to learn teaching strategies, we should hire specialists in that area, which is likely so demanding that they will not also have any special expertise in philosophy.
An unrelated small point: back when I was at CU Boulder, a full professor there, now long since retired, once admitted that the reason they have a master’s program (not the PhD program) is so that faculty could teach graduate seminars more frequently. The MA students pay full freight, and as long as they’re not total dummies they would get in, to help populate graduate seminars. His explicit criterion for admitting these students was: “will their presence in my graduate seminar make it better or worse?”
Almost everyone I know who went thru elite graduate programs thinks like this: teaching good teachers just is making them good researchers. I just don’t think that’s true. Forget about research and teaching for a minute. The Generalist-Specialist distinction is very real, and training to be a Generalist is different from a good Specialist. True in medicine, physics, sports, business too. I think better teacher-oriented programs would be more Generalist than Specialist. Of course there are exceptions to this. I think many good Generalists just aren’t producing peer-review publishable stuff because that’s a game biased toward specialists. The paradigm case of this is Agnes Callard.
Yes, good point. I was thinking more of the first half, classroom part of the graduate program, not the second half where you write the dissertation. And yes, the dissertation part would not be very useful for future teachers, especially relative to other things they could be learning for those ~3 years.
I guess there I’d say a big part of the problem is just credential inflation. We could—right now—graduate teachers just after their coursework is done, so they’d have the equivalent of a master’s degree, and they would be just as effective as the teachers we graduate after completing a PhD dissertation. (Of course, those teachers would be even better if instead of a dissertation they learned even more teaching-specific stuff.) But the PhD signals something above and beyond a MA degree, so they all have to chase that too, which is unfortunate.
I think six years is a good amount of time
for a generalist. Even to this day, my history and cross-cultural philosophy knowledge is atrocious!
Yeah, Princeton was (is still?) really narrow and focused on research specialization, compared to other schools. But I guess that’s a step in the direction you favor, right? That Princeton is specialized in churning out researchers, whereas schools lower on the PGR give their students a more broad-based education.
Excellent. In the time-honored philosophical tradition of focusing on the least important part of what you are saying and offering a tiny nitpick comment, I offer this: Federer used a one-handed backhand.
Yeah he didn’t come up thru any elite academies.
Asking “where have all the Parfits gone?” is like asking “where have all the Andre Agassis gone?” circa 2002. And the answer, ironically, is in Reasons and Persons: the Agassis and Parfits were casualties of optimization (i.e. the repugnant conclusion). Tennis, thankfully, escaped the Z-world; it had the good sense not to put Ivanisevic, Sampras, and all the big men with monster serves in charge of the rules. But philosophy is still optimizing (i.e. sliding from A to Z), piling distinctions on top of distinctions, each time making things a little bit clearer and each time deepening the worry that something very important has been lost.
Vassar name-drop was horrifying.
Time for them all to sober up and read William James on the PhD octopus.🐙
The argument ignores the problem of tenure track positions at even mid-level colleges and universities that require publications. Too few institutions value teaching enough to make it the primary or singular criterion for promotion. Teaching track positions are great and should be more respected, better compensated and more numerous. PhD programs could be tailored accordingly.
This reminds me very intensely of why I quit grad school. I wanted to teach, and the system doesn't value that. I'm with "Blam" in this narrative.
Asia has monasteries, for people who don't fit in. We have PhDs.
This whole little scenario is elitist
I take it they are all in the USA. I live in France, educated in Scotland, mostly lived in England. I know a lot of French cleaners who could out-argue this lot. Not the star names and the lit. But thinking, reflecting, deeply questioning. It's in their language , in their education. Of course there are confused, simplistic folks. I mean generally. You only see it when you're in it. And only a strip of water separates the UK from France. But then the river and the sea define a genocide. 'Philosophers' as depicted above are shams. They should spend a year in a French cleaning agency. Then they'd know what thinking is as well as praxis.