I had an illuminating teaching experience this term that I figured I'd share with readers, and which I think might serve as a useful springboard for discussion. First, a little background.
It occurred to me recently that in all my years as a philosophy student, I was never directly taught how to write a paper. I wrote countless papers as a student, of course. But, by and large, I was mostly just expected to 'figure it out.' As an undergraduate, I was given term-paper prompts by instructors, and then did my best to write a paper on one of them. Then, as a graduate student, I just came up with the best ideas I could on the course material, and then write them up. Then, of course, I would received grade--and, for the most part, that was that. In a few cases (for example, my first undergrad course with Dan Dennett), I was able to revise and resubmit papers. But, as far as learning how to write papers, that was basically it.
Anyway, because I found Dan's resubmission policy so helpful as a student, for many years I did the same thing as an instructor: I had a standing policy of allowing (and encouraging) students to rewrite papers as many times as they wanted. While this was an extremely labor-intensive policy (both for them and me), it generally seemed to work pretty well: a fair proportion of my students would rewrite their papers, improve their work, and appreciate the learning process and their improvement. Still, for all that, there appeared to be a lot of wasted energy in the process: revisions that only modestly improved the student's paper, me spending a ton of time grading them, and so on. Finally, a good proportion of my students never did them anyway--so, it seemed like the rewrite policy wasn't quite 'reaching' them. Those students (particularly the ones who didn't do well) were never learning how to write a good paper.
Because of my dissatisfaction with the revise-and-resubmit approach, a while back I began trying a new strategy: term-paper workshops. Toward the end of the semester, I'd devote half of each class period to helping work their way through each stage of putting together a good term paper. First, there would be a day devoted to brainstorming. I'd post a worksheet on Blackboard asking them to sketch out a few ideas they have for their paper (in response to the term-paper prompts), and which asks them to not only state a rough thesis (or theses, if they have multiple ideas), but also how they plan to argue for it and what kinds of objections a reader might have. Then I would have them discuss their worksheet with a randomly selected peer, who would then fill out a series of questions, commenting on how promising the peer thought the topic, thesis, and argument were, and so on. Then, over a few weeks, I'd use a similar process for workshopping drafts of parts of the paper. The workshop schedule would go something like this:
- Brainstorming
- Outlining the paper
- Drafting an introduction
- Drafting an exposition/summary section
- Drafting an argumentative section
- Drafting a critical discussion section (e.g. grappling with objections)
Finally, in order to incentivize student effort, I would grade students on the basis of the extent to which they put a good faith effort into both parts of the assignment: as author and peer-reviewer. I have to be honest, though: after a few semesters of trying this, I found the 'peer review' part of the workshops to be mostly useless. This was for a couple of reasons. First, my undergraduate students simply didn't have a very good idea of what a good philosophy paper looks like--so their peer feedback was often counterproductive. Second, they often seemed reticent to be sufficiently critical: they seemed like they wanted to avoid offending their partner, so oftentimes their feedback would (in my view) be artificially positive (and again, not very useful).
So what I did this fall, and in a couple of other recent semesters, was do the workshop, but only have students submit their workshop materials to me. I found this works like a charm. Indeed, the term-papers that my students turned in this fall were, on balance, the best papers I think I've ever had students submit. Why? Well, think about the process I outlined above. Anyone who has graded undergraduate term papers knows that students can majorly screw up at many different points.
First, they may simply have a bad/non-viable topic (i.e. thesis and argument). Having students brainstorm things, and then giving them formal feedback on their ideas before they draft the paper, can enable them to avoid this error. Indeed, even if what they brainstorm is bad, they can see why and then develop a better/more viable topic (several of my students this fall did this).
Second, in my experience students simply don't have a very good idea what a good introduction, summary exposition, etc., looks like for a philosophy paper--so, having them workshop each and every stage gives them a clear idea before moving on to drafting the next part of their paper.
Third, and this in my experience may be the very best part of the workshops, formally grading (and giving an 'unofficial grade') for earlier parts of the paper incentivizes better student effort when drafting. Here's what I mean. Most of us, I think, have had students submit shoddy papers--papers that show that they didn't put much effort into their paper (writing it, let's say, the night before it's due). Then, of course, we've had experience with these same students getting upset about their eventual grade, thinking they should have done better on the assignment than they did (let's say, because their instructors in other disciplines aren't very rigorous graders). What workshopping each stage of a developing paper enables me to do as an instructor is to show them very early on just how rigorous of a grader I am. So, for example, when they draft their 1/2 page introductory paragraph, and I grade everything about it to very strict standards (grammar, editing, organization, content, etc.), the student is apt to think to themselves, "Wow, I better put a lot more effort into my exposition section than I thought!". Then, when I subject their exposition to the same high standards, that seems like it solidifies the same point (viz. "Wow, I ought to put a lot more effort into my argumentative section than I thought!").
Long story short, I've found that the first drafts of student papers (viz. their workshop materials) tend to be far better than the final drafts of papers that I used to receive, and that insofar as students use the feedback I give them in the workshops to revise their papers for final submission, their final drafts (on average) this semester were vastly better than any that I received before. A couple of closing thoughts: it occurred to me that, in all of my years as a philosophy student, I never went through a process like this--and it was probably to my detriment. For example, I think it would have been great in grad school to have a seminar or workshops entitled, "How to compose a publishable paper", where an instructor would give step-by-step feedback on what journal reviewers would think is good or bad about this or that section of a paper. I never feel like I had a very clear idea about this except by learning it through trial-and-error (via lots of journal rejections). Second, I imagine that one potential concern about my workshop approach is that it might be 'too overbearing', imprinting upon my students what I think a good philosophy paper looks like, giving them too much direction rather than letting them figure stuff out on their own. I appreciate this concern, but think it can be mitigated by taking care to not simply "give students the answers" (viz. 'writing their paper for them'). The key, I think, is all in the kind of feedback one provides.
Anyway, this is just a teaching experience that I figured that I'd share, and I figure it could give rise to some good discussion. Here, for example, are a few questions to potentially discuss in the comments section below:
- How do you teach students how to write philosophy papers?
- Does what you work well? If so, how?
- Do you think you were given enough instruction on how to write a good philosophy paper (say, in grad school)?
- If so, what did that instruction look like?
- If not, what do you wish your instructors (and/or grad faculty) had done?
Do philosophers typically think philosophy is real? As in: do you honestly believe the philosophical positions you hold, or believe that the field you work in is pursuing real things?
I've been in graduate school for five years, and always struggled with this question. I always assumed people knew philosophy was an intellectual flight of fancy and picked philosophical positions arbitrarily. I also have always assumed that philosophical issues are fantasy. But the people in my program seem to think that the positions they hold are actually right. Am I the outlier? Do other people have similar inclinations?
I think these are really good questions. Before I weigh in and open things up for discussion, here are three response comments that readers submitted:
PhD student: nope, you're not an outlier. Your fellow grad students need to grow up. Some people never do. - by Overseas Tenured
I would not have dedicated over a decade of my life, and many 60+ hr work weeks, to philosophy, if I thought "philosophy was an intellectual flight of fancy" or if I was "pick[ing] philosophical positions arbitrarily". There are, of course, some topics researched in philosophy that I might characterize as "intellectual flights of fancy", but I avoid those and work on what I take to be serious, important issues. I also try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and assume there's something in those others topics that is important that I'm missing. As far as I know, all of my friends take either their own work, or at least much of what they teach, reasonably seriously. Some may take it more seriously than others, and I know everyone at some point struggles with feeling like their work is actually worthless, but I don't know anyone who openly takes such an extreme and sweeping view of philosophy --- e.g., seeing their own work as a mere kind of game detached from reality or anything important, and also seeing basically all of philosophy that same way. Here are some questions addressed in philosophy: How do we have a just society? Is a specific policy X just and fair? Do animals feel pain and should we eat them? When is it appropriate to believe something based on the evidence? What makes something "fake news"? These (and variations of them) are all questions studied by philosophers. I would have thought they are all clearly important and asking about objective features of reality. - by Mike
Kieran Setiya's podcast "Five Questions" asks most (or all?) of the people he interviews whether they believe the philosophical positions they hold. So you can check out that podcast for various answers to that question. - by Daniel Weltman
My own position here is somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, I wouldn't do philosophy if I didn't think the questions we address are real, and if I didn't think there is something to the views that I defend. On the other hand, I very much appreciate skeptical concerns about traditional philosophical methods. As Jason Brennan argues in his 2010 article, 'Scepticism about philosophy', "Widespread disagreement shows that pursuing philosophy is not a reliable method of discovering true answers to philosophical questions. More likely than not, pursuing philosophy leads to false belief." I advance similar concerns here about traditional methods in moral philosophy. My own preferred answer to this kind of skeptical challenge is that philosophy should use better methods, drawing on science and the methods of the sciences, vis-a-vis natural philosophy. Which is why I think rising interest in metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy is especially valuable. Finally, as many have noted, I think it is impossible to avoid taking philosophical stances on things--for example, on what morality or justice are. We have to simply do our best, though again I think we should use better methods rather than worse ones.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Do you side with PhD Student and Overseas Tenured in thinking of philosophy as little more than flight of fancy, or do you think philosophy is serious business? And, do you believe the views you defend? If so, how do you grapple with skepticism about philosophy's methods?