Students are a fulcrum for the transformation of the community, the society, the nation, the world. It has to do with power. College and university instructors have the power to oblige students to do something. The classes in which I am privileged to participate are becoming places of transformation because students engage in projects.
Is it necessary to do this in a formal setting? Absolutely not. The magic can happen wherever people gather in a commitment to learning. And it is surely possible that a person could take the solitary, self-help approach to reading this book, and I fully expect that many readers will have the imagination, initiative, and decisiveness to follow through with the projects proposed here. But I well know how easy it is to read about great ideas passively.
Philosophy by itself lacks the power to change the world. But philosophic concepts, brought into experience, can promote transformation in the lives of those who can and do make a difference.
A student reports that his life was “jumpstarted.” Another tells of a breakthrough with her roommate. Another writes of overcoming the barrier with her parents.” The stories go on and on, and they are stunning. People take on projects that develop an appetite for service and thus initiate a change for the rest of their lives.
I also know that sermons alone do not do the job. As someone who occasionally has a chance to preach, I have been part of services that were very powerful . . . for the moment. The congregation leaves thinking well of the preacher, and nothing further happens. I have taught classes in church that were well received, and nothing changed. It is totally different in a class where one can say, “We’re going to be working on this philosopher/religious tradition for three weeks, and here is the project we’ll be doing, and you’ll be handing in a paper at the end of that time.” You should see what happens then!
Does it happen for everyone? Of course not. Do some people occasionally have poor experiences? Yes, that happens, too, but rarely. Conservatively I would estimate that a majority of students have a strongly positive growth experience in at least one of the projects we do in a particular class. The word “transformation” is too strong for many of these cases, but it is not too strong for many of the experiences I see reported. The more I grow in my ability to assign projects and to help students move through them, the more unanimously students report significant growth.
Crucial to the success of the project is supporting students for whatever they feel comfortable believing or not believing at the present time. Thus there is, for example, no religious presupposition in the projects. Students are free to revise, reshape, adjust, or reject the concept proposed for the project.
The men and women, young and old, whom I meet as a teacher are a diverse lot. Though a majority are Christians of various sorts, there are also Jews, some Hindus and Muslims, neopagans, wiccans, many interested in Buddhism or Native American traditions, and a sizeable proportion of atheists. A growing number are non-traditional, that is, men and women who return to study after some years of working and raising families. The older students are a treasure, indeed, seasoned by mistakes and suffering and discoveries and values gained in genuine success. The experiential orientation of projects helps keep everyone in the conversation.
What’s the trick? I will share it with you as much as I can in the following pages. You will see the projects that have prompted people into amazing discoveries. You’ll see projects for introduction to philosophy, world religions projects, and ethics. You will see projects having to do with putting scientific thinking into practice in daily life, and with “walking in beauty.”
The projects go along with some text we are reading. In the Kent State University Department of Philosophy, there is an unwritten rule that we read the great texts, often in their entirety. We do not let any one professor’s text synthesize everything for the students. Even an excellent professor cannot replace the stimulus of the diverse, great literature of the ages and the best of challenging current writing. And those voices need to speak for themselves, even if only in translation, in a book. So this text is not intended to be the centerpiece of a course, but a supplement. In fact, the philosophy of education here moves away from text-centered and instructor-centered education toward education in which the student’s experiential discoveries in truth, beauty, and goodness become central.
This book has been written to be able to stand on its own, but it is not a substitute for the great wisdom traditions, the classics of philosophy, or contemporary analyses of perennial issues. This book is a bridge, designed to assist the reader to take diverse sources of idea and inspiration and help them come to life by integrating one’s dialogue with them into daily life.