Russell Marcus is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Hamilton College. A board member of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, he also directs the Hamilton College Summer Program in Philosophy, a laboratory for innovation in philosophical pedagogy.
1. In what ways does your teaching engage the world outside of the classroom?
My own teaching is pretty traditional especially in my choices of texts and topics. I specialize in the philosophy of mathematics and I teach logic, early modern, philosophy of math, and philosophy of language. But I love working with students in classrooms and thinking about how to make classrooms more active, engaging, and fun. I think of my teaching as helping to empower students to live more full and meaningful lives, mainly in indirect ways, by helping them to develop intellectual confidence and transferable skills.
I also help teachers to become more thoughtful, creative, and effective in their own classrooms, mainly through my involvement with the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT). Some of that effort has just been the ordinary, time-consuming work of the program committee for our biennial conference, which I chaired (or co-chaired) for six years. More recently, I have been working to institutionalize what we call Teaching Hubs at the three annual divisional APA meetings.
I also developed and direct the Hamilton College Summer Program in Philosophy (HCSPiP), a laboratory for innovation in philosophical pedagogy. We bring in three creative teachers to try some new kinds of teaching, and twenty students, for two weeks. We’re preparing for our second run now.
2. Can traditional philosophy be a force for social change or progress?
I sure hope so! Unlike some philosophers who grapple with traditional kinds of questions, I don’t think that the content of what we do in philosophy is all that important. I love working on the epistemology of abstract objects, for example, and I’m a proud platonist. Understanding mathematics is important, in an indirect way, in getting straight about human beings and their cognitive capacities. But it is not important for most students to think about the philosophy of mathematics.
I do think that it is important for my students to study some such material, though. Grappling with the eternal questions and the difficult material that we encounter in a traditional philosophy classroom forces students to develop skills. They have to push themselves to understand essays that make no real sense to them at first. They develop confidence by figuring out how to manage challenging content. They learn that they can, with the help of mentors and peers, achieve ends that seemed impossible and think about the world in ways that aren’t typical. They learn to ask questions where others accept blindly. Then, when they go out into the world, they do so armed with assuredness that they can change the world, and not just inherit the social and institutional structures that they find there.
Two of the most important books I read in college were Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations. Neither pointed directly to work I most value. Others are better situated to work, professionally, to liberating those who suffer from structural inequities. Lakatos’s philosophy of mathematics is implausible. But both books sung to me by pointing toward the importance of empowering students, of seeing teaching as service.
3. How do the Teaching Hubs help philosophers to engage the world outside of philosophy?
It is absurdly embarrassing how little philosophers have valued their teaching, and how the most influential in our field continue to do so. For example, many of the comments on every post about teaching on Daily Nous conflate teaching and lecturing.
If we are going to argue for the importance of our work to the public, it cannot be on the basis of our research into abstruse, narrow debates. Those debates are important to us, and fun. But what really matters is our ability, like instructors in no other discipline, to help students to learn how to critically assess the social and institutional structures that we receive, to think about how best to create a more just world, and to challenge our students to be better thinkers and better people.
The AAPT was formed forty years ago largely in reaction to the unwillingness of the APA to take teaching seriously. I fell in love with the organization because it was filled with smart and ambitious philosophers who were also kind and generous and inclusive, which I had not found elsewhere in the profession. Now, the APA has made space for discussions of pedagogy at the divisional meetings. The response of philosophy teachers has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are starting to see people understand how exciting good undergraduate instruction can be. For example, at the Eastern in January 2019, we had a session on teaching Gettier cases that pushed us to think about why we teach the problem, gave attendees a concrete activity to take back to their classes, and encouraged us to consider not teaching the topic at all. We had a table-talk session on engaged philosophy in which participants could, in just an hour, hear different ways to implement civic engagement in their classes. Susan Brison sang philosophy-related jazz standards.
4. Do you deny that direct social engagement in philosophy classes is important?
Absolutely not. I’m in awe of some of the amazing work that I see, philosophers taking their tools out of the classroom and into the world. But I do worry, first, that we can fail to pair civic engagement with philosophical texts that challenge our students; our bread and butter is intellectual. Second, I worry that even if we assign and grapple with difficult material, the challenges of civic engagement can pressure us to abandon our core reflective and adjudicative positions in favor of advocacy.
At 9 AM on the day after the 2016 election, I was teaching logic and holding back tears. I was tempted to rant and rally my students. But I had at least one student who was thrilled with the election result. It would be difficult for me to be as open-minded as I need to be, in my role as a teacher, if I were encouraging students to certain kinds of civic engagement. I was glad to be teaching anodyne logic!
But also, political leadership really isn’t my strength. So, my desire for sharp boundaries between my personal politics and my classroom work may be more of an ad hoc reification of my personal preferences than the conclusion of a sustainable argument.
5. What kinds of creative pedagogy have you adopted?
I’m a big fan of team-based learning (TBL), which I learned largely from Kimberly Van Orman at the SUNY Albany Institute for Teaching, Learning & Academic Leadership. Kimberly calls it group work for the control-freak teacher. I like all sorts of cooperative learning in the classroom, as long as its structured and goal-directed. Talking for the sake of talking is problematic for lots of reasons, including inclusion. With TBL, I can seed discussions to empower students toward specific objectives, while leaving them free to form their own views.
6. How did you start to think creatively about your pedagogy?
I taught high school for five years before I started graduate school and found that I really enjoyed both curriculum design and classroom innovation. I had some great mentors, but even then, it’s easy to get into ruts. I need a community of creative teachers to really thrive, which is part of why I love the AAPT so much.
7. What challenges to improving instruction in philosophy have you found?
Primarily, there are significant institutional barriers to excellent teaching. Philosophers are rewarded most for their publishing, when our most important work is in the classroom. Graduate students are well advised to teach with as little effort as possible in order to leave the most time for their own work. Even at Hamilton College, where we value teaching highly, we are mainly expected to develop our courses and then do little more than tweak them from year to year. The costs, in time, of re-thinking and re-designing our courses, of experimenting and innovating, can be too high. I am grateful to my department and my school for supporting my work significantly. But even getting proper furniture for our classrooms can be a struggle. And I’m lucky to be working in a resource-rich school. Most philosophy teachers find themselves in much worse circumstances.
8. How can I start to think about improving my pedagogy?
Come to a Teaching Hub if you’re at an APA. Attend a biennial meeting of the AAPT. Especially if you’re a more-junior teacher, the Teaching and Learning Seminar at the AAPT is a great opportunity to get started with a wide range of pedagogies. Our one-day seminars go on the road, and they can be arranged at your own institution. And if you have an idea, you can make a proposal to teach at the HCSPiP!
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