Mr. Anderson Religion Department

UPDATE: Anderson Teacher Profile \| Calendar \| MARKS Per2 12Justice \| MARKS Per3 Philosophy \| MARKS Per4 Philosophy \| Social Justice FOCUS \| DAY QUESTION JUSTICE \| Social Justice Racism & Culminating Projects \| +Social Justice \| +RFHallJusticeVideos \| +FORA/TEDTV/Frontline \| +Video/Movie/Music/Poetry \| +AlternativeNews/Magazines \| +Philosophy \| DAY QUESTION PHILOSOPHY \| Philosophy Outline & 1st Assignment \| 2012 Philosophy NOTES \| 2011 Philosophy NOTES \| Philosophy Pages \| Philosophy LINKS \| PhilosophyTeachingSchedule \| PhilosophyTeachingLINKS \| PhilosophyStudNotes2011 \| Kant LINKS \| PhilosophyPaper & Final Culminating Assignment \| PhilosophyCulminating LINKS \| Palestine Peace Paper \| Palestine Peace Links \| 1stNotes 2003 \| 2ndNotes 2003 \| 1stNotes 2008 \| 2ndNotes 2008 \| 3rdNotes 2008 \| 4thNotes 2008 \| PICS HomeroomChristmas \| Funarte \| UpdateIndex \| Help

VIEW: Home \| Anderson Teacher Profile \| Calendar \| MARKS Per2 12Justice \| MARKS Per3 Philosophy \| MARKS Per4 Philosophy \| Social Justice FOCUS \| DAY QUESTION JUSTICE \| Social Justice Racism & Culminating Projects \| +Social Justice \| +RFHallJusticeVideos \| +FORA/TEDTV/Frontline \| +Video/Movie/Music/Poetry \| +AlternativeNews/Magazines \| +Philosophy \| DAY QUESTION PHILOSOPHY \| Philosophy Outline & 1st Assignment \| 2012 Philosophy NOTES \| 2011 Philosophy NOTES \| Philosophy Pages \| Philosophy LINKS \| PhilosophyTeachingSchedule \| PhilosophyTeachingLINKS \| PhilosophyStudNotes2011 \| Kant LINKS \| PhilosophyPaper & Final Culminating Assignment \| PhilosophyCulminating LINKS \| Palestine Peace Paper \| Palestine Peace Links \| 1stNotes 2003 \| 2ndNotes 2003 \| 1stNotes 2008 \| 2ndNotes 2008 \| 3rdNotes 2008 \| 4thNotes 2008 \| PICS HomeroomChristmas \| Funarte

Visit the TeacherWeb® videos to learn about the features, modifications, and customizations available on your website. Click here to learn more. Philosophy Outline & 1st Assignment small medium large PONDERING THE BIG QUESTIONS Spring 2012 Exploring Human Nature & the Nature of PHILOSOPHY This course is an invitation to ponder the really big questions of life, like: Why are we here? What is our real purpose? Who are we really? Does God exist and if so then why do pain, evil and ignorance exist? What is the nature of the universe? What is the nature of happiness, truth, joy, courage, etc? What is real and what is illusion? The challenge throughout this course in philosophy is to ask the hard questions that unmask our presumptions, that force us to face these issues personally and with brutal honesty, so that we can get beyond the easy answers, the traditional explanations, and the conventional responses that have been handed down to us by others. It means finding our own answers no matter what this costs us, questioning our limited world views, our ignorance, our own prejudice in order to find authentic wisdom that personally makes sense. This course is an introduction to the main branches of philosophy which include: logic, epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and social philosophy. Readings and assignments will include the perspectives of a variety of sources and not just the traditional voices of western thought. EVALUATION for the course work will be as follows: Knowledge & Understanding 30% This includes tests, quizzes and all exercises that measure student's knowledge and understanding of the course material. Thinking & Inquiry 25% This includes reflections, assignments, and homework that focus on thinking and inquiry. Application 25% This includes reflections, assignments, and homework that focus on applications of ideas and concepts learned in the course. Communication 20% This includes creative assignments, presentations and all aspects of the student's presence, participation and involvement. Friday Reflections: Every two weeks students will write a personal reflection on the assigned issue we are exploring in class. It should be 250 words and typed. Daily Assignment: When completed that evening, and ready for the next day's class, students will receive full grades; one day late homework gets half credit. Term work will be valued at 70% of the final grade. The final assessment and exam combine for 30% of the final grade. Extra Credit work can be done for the term to replace low or incomplete grades up to 75% at the teacher's discretion. Effort and attendance are requirements for doing this extra credit work; each must be type written and 250 words with proof that the source comes from the class webpage RESEARCH PAPER: the FIRST Assignment Due Friday February 17th, 2012 Pick an issue that many are unaware of and which presents a real problem to our lives and/or our world. Like the story of the cave, your challenge is to uncover this issue in order to show others the way out of the shadows, into the light of freedom, truth and new possibilities. Using the model of "See- Judge Act" which originated with Brazilian popular educator Pablo Freire, write a 750 word research paper on any contemporary issue. The paper should include three sources and must have proper footnote and bibliography citations. Your job is to research the issue well enough to describe it in three ways. First, what is the issue? How do we see or experience it? What does it feel like? What is really going on? Second, how should we judge or understand this issue? What are its causes? How can we make sense of it? how did we get to this point? Third and finally, what must we do in response to this issue? How should we act or react to this reality? Make sure to include quotes and research throughout the paper. PAULO FREIRE By Rich Gibson Paulo Freire, the radical Brazilian "Vagabond of the Obvious" and the most widely known educator in the world, died on May 2, 1997 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was 75. Freire drew on humanist and Marxist ideas to forge a concept of popular literacy education for personal and social liberation. He suggested that the use of his "see-judge-act" student-centered methods could lead to critical consciousness, an awareness of the necessity to constantly unveil appearances designed to protect injustice, and be a foundation for action toward equality and democracy. To Freire, no form of education could be neutral. All pedagogy is a call to action. In a society animated by inequality and authoritarianism, he chose the side of the many, and exposed the partisanship of those who claimed to stand above it all. Freire became a world figure after he was briefly jailed for using literacy methods developed by Catholic-based communities among poor peasants. He was driven from his native Brazil by a rising dictatorship in 1964. He fled to Chile to work with the democratically elected Allende government which fell to a CIA- manufactured coup. He spent the next 15 years in exile, working at Harvard and for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, organizing and writing books for social justice. In 1989, shortly after he returned to Brazil as a leader of the social-democratic Workers Party, Freire was named secretary of education in Sao Paulo, a city of 13 million people. He served for two years. In the early 1970s, Freire�s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Education for Critical Consciousness swept the globe. The books, and nearly two dozen others that followed, proposed that education, though in inequitable societies predominantly a tool of elite�s, is also a democratic egalitarian weapon. Freire recommended methods recognizing the experience and dignity of students and their culture, techniques calling into question the assumptions which lay at the base of their social systems. Freire�s pedagogy united the curriculum, grasping that the seamless coat of learning is made alien by teaching methods that split it into irrational pieces. Freire�s geographic literacy involved mapping problems, not memorizing borders. Freire criticized "banking" educational methods that see students as empty accounts to be filled with deposits of knowledge. He practiced a transformational style, the student becoming a subject in gaining and experimenting with knowledge. Truth became an examination of social understandings, not a doctrine determined by testing services. Motivation came from demonstrations that education is linked to power. For the process to work, the educator- leader had to be deeply involved in the daily lives of the students. Especially in the developing world, Freire was seen as a leader in a movement which could connect literacy, social insight, revolution, and national economic development. There are problems with Freire�s work. He became, against his protests, an icon, idolized by dramatically different sectors of education and liberation movements. A little publishing industry evolved from uncritically praising a humble man whose life was social criticism. But Freire called himself a contradictory person. His politics were never altogether clear. The Marxist Freire urged the analysis of labor and production. Like the entire socialist project, Freire was not able to resolve the incongruity of human liberation and national economic development. The humanist post-modern Freire denied the centrality of class and focused on deconstructing culture and language. In both cases, Freire had to rely on the ethics of the educator-leader to mediate the tensions between middle class teachers and profoundly exploited students. So, with a little effort, his works were simultaneously appropriated by capitalist enterprises like Con Edison, relatively dogmatic Marxist movements in Guinea Bissau and Grenada, and reformist poverty programs in the United States. Nevertheless, Freire�s focus on the role of ideology and a utopian vision, the needs for imaging a better future before it can be achieved, and the vital necessity of leadership fully at one with the people, deepened the practices of movements for social change. His grasp of the reciprocal interactions of class, race, sex, and nationality as simultaneously pivotal to conscious action for change pre-dated both feminism and post-modernism. His methods open a process in which students examine both their potential roles as self-liberators, and the history of people who cease to be instruments of their own oppression. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY: It is not easy to say what philosophy is. Philosophers disagree. In an unsatisfactory sound-bite, philosophy is a discipline which questions what is frequently taken for granted. Socrates, who has become a symbol for philosophy, said "the unexamined life is not worth living." He meant that a full life must include an examination of the reasons why we live and think and believe the way we do. This examination can be called "philosophy." The word "philosophy" comes from two Greek words: "philo" (love) and "sophia" (wisdom). Literally, "philosophy" is "philo-sophia" or "the love of wisdom." If this sounds pretentious (like philosophical hubris) it may help to remember that philosophy frequently ends with Socrates' humbling conclusion that we don't or can't know the things we think we know. In searching for philosophy, it may help to look at a standard reference book. Here's what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say. Throughout its long and varied history in the West, "philosophy" has meant many different things.... [A]n examination of moral responsibilities and social obligations; an effort to fathom divine intentions and [humanity's] place with reference to them; an effort to ground the enterprise of natural science; a rigourous examination of the origin, extent and validity of [people's] ideas; an exploration of the place of will or consciousness in the universe; an examination of the values of truth, goodness, beauty; an effort to codify the rules of human thought in order to promote rationality and the extension of clear thinking." As long winded and seemingly unconnected as these topics might seem, they have a common thread. Philosophy is, they suggest, the act of reflecting on on the core beliefs that inform our view of the world and our behaviour. Because our core beliefs are reflected in almost any subject, one can find philosophers at work on issues that relate to most topics and disciplines. As new subjects and issues arise and gain importance, philosophers take up the challenge and continue a long tradition of philosophical inquiry. It is this tradition which is the basis of the undergraduate philosophy curriculum at contemporary universities. In trying to understand philosophy, it may help to divide it in terms of time periods, movements, individual philosophers, or subject matter. Studying the history of a group of philosophers or a philosophical movement tells us what mattered to these thinkers, how they debated, and the conclusions that they reached. Historically based groups of philosophers are frequently studied under headings like: Presocratic Philosophy; Ancient Philosophy, Hellenistic Philosophy; Stoicism; Medieval Philosophy; Early Modern Philosophy; British Empiricism; Continental Rationalism; Twentieth Century Philosophy; Logical Positivism, American Pragmatism; Deconstructionism; Post- Modernism; and so on. Individual philosophers who are the subject of frequent study include Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, Leibniz, Peter Abelard, Dewey, Donald Davidson, W.V.O. Quine, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and many, many others. Subject matters which are commonplace in philosophy today include the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, applied ethics, epistemology (the theory of knowledge), scepticism, metaphysics, philosophy of art, phenomenology, feminism, social and political philosophy, logic, and the philosophy of law. The best way to find out about philosophy is to read and think and discuss it. One way is by continuing with this invitation to philosophy and by exploring relevant philosophy links on the web. WHY STUDY PHILOSOPHY? One might distinguish two reasons for studying philosophy or any other subject. First, and most importantly, you may study something because it intrigues or interests you. This is probably the best reason for studying anything. In the case of philosophy, studying it formally or informally is for you if you are curious or passionate about questions like: "What is right and wrong?" "Why is the Mona Lisa a great work of art?" "Is religion superstition?" "How can we distinguish between science and pseudo-science?" "Is abortion wrong?" "What can we know?" "In what sense is 'virtual reality' real?" "Is morality possible if there is no God?" "What ultimately exists?" "Is the human mind just a sophisticated computer?" "How should we treat animals?" "What obligations do we have to the poor?" "Is time travel possible?" "Are men and women different in ways that go beyond their sexual goals?" "What is the right way to reason?" "Does European civilization think too highly of itself?" If these kinds of questions capture your imagination, then you should find some time for philosophy. Not everybody is suited to an in depth study of the discipline, but everybody lives a life that depends on beliefs that philosophy explores, so most lives can be deepened and enriched by some study of philosophy. A second reason for studying something is the possibility that it will provide a basis for future employment or a career. Such concerns are legitimate and important, but it might easily be argued that they are over emphasized in today's education. If you ask sixty year olds what they studied when they were twenty, you will usually find that the specific job skills they learned then have little to do with their present occupation (go ahead and try it!). There are lots of reasons for this: people's interests change; career advancement often means that someone's job changes along with the skills that it requires; individual initiatives and opportunities often take people in unexpected directions; and job skills frequently change as technology and the world changes (a forty year old today didn't learn multi- media or how to use the web twenty years ago). Looked at from this point of view, philosophy is an excellent preparation for almost any career. It does not teach job related skills (at least not directly) but it is one of the most effective -- perhaps the most effective - - discipline for teaching basic reasoning, writing and thinking skills which are of use in any occupation. By also teaching students how to think about "the big picture" and how to think of rationality and morality, it can provide an excellent basis for a career. The key point to note about philosophy is its emphasis on active thinking. Unlike programs which emphasize the memorization and regurgitation of a body of facts, philosophy encourages the cultivation of analysis, criticism and communication. The benefits and skills acquired by analyzing philosophical texts and writing about them include the ability to: Comprehend complex passages Assimilate and understand the ideas of others Develop an ability to research a topic Criticize the propositions in other people's arguments Learn to assert your own ideas Be creative and novel in solving problems Communicate ideas clearly Construct rational and persuasive arguments Work around a deadline Work under pressure Formulate articulate, well-constructed essays and presentations Learn about and appreciate other disciplines (psychology, sociology, communication studies, english, history, anthropology, etc.) By learning to effectively comprehend, analyze and criticize texts, and creatively form solutions or answers to problems, the philosophy student is forced to adapt to new situations, try different approaches, and adopt a variety of perspectives. Because philosophy questions all assumptions, philosophy students learn to probe issues more deeply than students in many other disciplines. An added benefit of philosophy is an introduction to the intellectual currents and trends that inform the society in which we live. Reading Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes or contemporary feminists is not relevant only because they have important ideas you need to think about. It is also important because their ideas have had a profound impact on how we as a society think of -- and raise questions about -- the good life, morality, politics, science, truth and so on. If you are comfortable with philosophy, you will be comfortable with the "big questions" that an informed understanding ourselves and the way we live depends on. Automatically clean input to optimize for the web. Or, would you like to view and optionally restore one of these previous versions? Password: Forgot your password?

Mr. Anderson Religion Department

Philosophy Outline & 1st Assignment

©2012 TeacherWeb, Inc.