Overview 

In this course, participants will have a formal role in directing the classroom conversation in two capacities: giving summaries of the previous class period, and directing the class discussion. By the end of this semester, each participant will take on each role at least twice. (If you haven’t already done so, please put your name on the sign-up sheet.) The hope is that doing so will allow you to practice doing philosophy with others and so help you to cultivate a credible and inspiring public identity as a philosopher. 

Summarizing Classroom Conversations

Summaries should be between three and five minutes. Begin by reminding the class of some of the big-picture context that is most relevant to conversation—e.g., course goals we have been focusing on, central questions we have been circling, or important lines of argument that we have been tracking. Next, give an overview of the main topic(s) of our last class period, and articulate in your own words two or three of the questions, insights, exchanges, examples, or aspects that you feel were most significant. Try to capture the most significant details of these moments or elements, so that what you say is not simply an abstraction. Finally, pick out one of these points and explain its philosophical significance in more depth. Feel free to add your own perspective in order to deepen, sharpen, and/or elaborate on what has already been said. 

Keep in mind that your goal in giving a summary is not primarily historical but philosophical. In other words, your main job is not merely to report what happened but, rather, to provide your own philosophical interpretation of what’s going on in the course. For this reason, each person’s summary of the same class period would, theoretically, be quite different, because it would reflect the unique questions and ideas that are most interesting to them.  

Please post a short write-up of your summary to the course website (along with a picture) within one week of giving your summary in class. Use the title convention, “Summary: [Topic/Teaser].” 

Leading Classroom Conversations

Leading the classroom conversation is somewhat more involved. It requires you to do the following:

  • Read the text you’re responsible for ahead of time, think deeply about the material and do any relevant background research, so that you can be our “local expert” on that text.
  • Post two or three reflection questions to the course website (along with a picture) by the Friday before the relevant class session, to give other participants plenty of time to think about your questions.
  • Work with Prof. Gallegos to guide and facilitate our class discussion.

As you prepare your questions and your plan for the classroom conversation, it will be helpful to keep the following principles in mind. When approaching any philosophical text, one effective order of operations is: 

  1. Make sure you understand what the author is claiming and the reasons that are supposed to support those claims.
  2. Consider examples that may illustrate or elaborate on the author’s view. 
  3. Consider objections to the author’s argument and evaluate its persuasiveness.    

Here is some more detail about each of these phases of inquiry. 

  1. Clarifying the author’s view 

It is often a good idea to begin by having everyone read together a passage from the text, for two reasons: first, it is unusually helpful for clarifying the author’s view, and second, it can be frustrating for participants to spend time reading a text when the text is never discussed in class. After examining a passage, it is usually helpful to try to articulate the view in your own words, both to ensure that you have understood it clearly, and to highlight what you find most significant in the passage.

If the passage is important to the author’s view, then it is likely that its significance will not be entirely clear, and unpacking it further will be a fruitful place for starting our inquiry. With this in mind, you might try to craft a carefully formulatedclarifying question, such as, “What does the author mean by the term…?” or “Why does the author think it is true that…?” or “What is the author assuming when she says that…?” Keep in mind, however, that a clarifying question by itself is usually not very helpful. Instead, it is best to provide a few competing options for how we might interpret the author, and explain what you think is at stake in which option we go with. Why does it matter what the author means, thinks, or assumes in this case?   

Another excellent way of clarifying the author’s views and reasons in support of those views is to try to translate it into a formal argument by listing premises and conclusions. If you are unsure of how to do so, it can be a wonderfully instructive thing for the entire class to collaborate on. 

2.  Identify an example 

Looking in your own personal experience, current events, films and novels, history, or hypothetical situations, find a situation that you think illustrates the author’s idea. Alternatively, it can also be helpful to find a “non-example,” a situation someone might think illustrates the author’s idea, but actually doesn’t. And don’t just give an example and let it go; instead, work to draw out its philosophical significance by articulating why we might think this example helps us avoid a potential misunderstanding of the author’s idea, or helps us to understand an aspect of the author’s larger argument that might not have been clear before. 

This part of the conversation can be an excellent place to bring in outside material that can dramatize the ideas. For example, we can look at short videos or clips, read a poem or a passage from a novel, or do an activity that puts the ideas to work in some way. 

3. Evaluate the author’s view 
Help the class articulate the best good reasons why someone might find one of the author’s claims to be persuasive or unpersuasive. Keep in mind that disagreement is helpful for evaluating arguments. So, if you disagree with the author, great!—but if you agree with the author, then don’t just agree, but also explain why you disagreewith apotential objection to the author’s claim. In either case, be sure to provide reasons for your conclusions.