Great (?) Moments in Teaching

One thing I love about teaching philosophy is the occasional break it takes into narrative. In general, this can be dangerous and it is something I've tried to avoid. In my first semester of teaching, I received a comment on an evaluation that said "teacher tends to babble." After that evaluation, I consciously tried to remove myself and my stories (perhaps what I thought were useful illustrations) from my teaching. Lately - and motivated mainly by exhaustion - these stories have managed to creep back in. I'm not sure of their effectiveness in delivering content, but too bad! It's too late now!

Today I was discussing A.J. Ayer's "Freedom and Necessity." Ayer says that we are responsible for our actions (and have chosen freely) just in case (a) there were options from which we could choose (this elusive notion that "I could have chosen otherwise"), (b) we were not acting under pressure from some neruosis, and (c) we were not being compelled to act by any certain agent. While not all of us act compulsively - Ayer cites the kleptomaniac, who has no choice but to steal - we might be able to recognize points at which our agency (point (c) above) has been made forefit for some reason, and in such cases (c) we may not be held responsible for our actions. In order to illustrate what Ayer is after here, I told a story about my brother and sister.

When Patric(k) was a young feller, he thought once it would be a good idea to take a puff of our neighbor's smoldering cigarette. As he proceeded to take a drag, our sister Kerry walked in the room and caught him smoking the cigarette. For some unknown reason, Kerry determined she suddenly had some leverage. For the next many years anytime Kerry wanted something, she would ask Patrick to take care of it for her, "or else" ... generally under the threat of telling mom and dad that Patrick smoked that cigarette at Jo's. Many is in bold for a reason - I don't think it came to light until Patrick's early adulthood that Kerry had a cigarette over his head for fifteen or so years. In any case, this is an effective demonstration of constraint because Patrick's actions were - at least on Ayer's account - never free, as long as they were motivated by Kerry and the threat of telling. My students got a chuckle out of this story, and so they will be writing a quiz on Friday about Kerry, Patrick, and constrained actions.

Stories are also highly effective when I teach Kant's second articulation of the Categorical Imperative ("act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end in itself, never only as means"). I always take a survey of how many students have waited tables or worked in retail - these are prime areas where an individual, a rational being with plans, projects, and goals have been used as mere means to someone else's end. In one of my ethics classes on Tuesday, this took a hilarious and unbelievably raucous turn into "what's the worst job you've ever had?" and/or "what's the worst interaction you've had with someone at work?" Some of my students who wait tables for a living educated their peers about their hourly wage ($3.64 an hour) and the consequences of not being tipped and receiving voided salary checks. Another student discussed the day in her job at the airport when a woman whose flight from Aspen was delayed threw her bags over the counter at my student's head.

Besides an extended version of the "what's worse" game ("Being Electrocuted"), Tuesday's class had an interesting unintended consequence of demonstrating why individuals should be respected - why servers should be given tips, why gate agents should be treated kindly, why you should be patient with retail employees, etc. In fact, one of my students said they would never stiff a server again, because now they have a face with the plight. Even if they didn't learn anything about Kant, at least they learned some common decency for folks in the service industry.

I refrained, I should say, from giving the "You treat your professor as mere means when ... " lecture, although I was sorely tempted. Alas, I refrained. We'll see if I can corral the conversation tomorrow.