Cuius
testiculos habes,
habeas
cardia et cerebellum
[Translation: “When you have a good grip on their balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”]
Statement of Teaching Philosophy
In terms of method, I believe in the maximal use of a Socratic approach, or guided discussion, although a substantial lecture format is unavoidable to some extent in large lower-level classes. I believe in using frequent writing assignments, usually short reaction papers, which I find successful in drawing students into their assigned readings and getting them to intellectually wrestle with the questions at issue in class discussion. I also believe in frequent testing with ample use of essay questions, as well as short-answer questions (even in larger classes), because these different types of questions test different skills—the ability to synthesize (in essays) and the ability to analyze (in objective questions, such as multiple-choice questions).
In terms of substance, I believe an important goal in teaching should be to inculcate a critical attitude in students to help liberate them from uncritical acceptance of dominant attitudes in the prevailing secular culture. As part of this critical attitude, I try to get students to think critically about the relationship between the perspective of the Christian/Catholic Faith and the theories they are studying in their various disciplines. For example, in my course on philosophy of human nature, I try to get students to think about the differing assumptions about human nature presupposed by different political or psychological theories, and to examine which of these would be more (or less) consistent with a Christian or Catholic understanding of human nature.
Accordingly, I believe education is about much more than the transmission of “information.” It is also about learning how to interpret what we know and how to think critically about our knowledge in a way that relates the perspective of faith to various non-theological disciplines. Finally, I think that the task of teaching cannot be separated from the responsibility of setting forth good habits of mind and manners, since learning is as much about cultivating virtues of an individual’s character as it is about absorbing facts.
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