Plato and the philosopher’s phone: the essay.
Students do essays applying some aspects of the theories studied to contemporary events. Over the years examples have included these:
John Howard meets the Ghost of Socrates past
Fundamentalists Christians say Socrates erodes family values
ANZAC Day and Pericles’s Funeral Oration
Socrates, the Post-Modernist
Mark Latham Philosopher-King?
Homosexuality is here to stay
Lysistrata for today
The Gandhi
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Phone
Plato and Socrates: the Lost Letters on the United Nations
The Clinton File by Aristotle
Princess Di, a Philosopher-Queen before Fifty
Aristotle on Multiculturalism
The Women, a lost Platonic dialogue
The Iraq War, a noble lie?
Students always complain about the constraints on their essays but when I say be creative that scares them, too. Still they have a lot of creativity to offer.
When I described classes as discussion I mentioned resistance in passing and said I would get back to that point. Some students just want to be lectured at, and usually for the wrong reasons, i.e., they then have no responsibility. But they don’t often say that, though a few have. What they do say is that they cannot discuss these works in classes with 30 or 40 others. I guess they want most of the class to leave the room so they have a more private and intimate tutorial. I can see ranks of Sydney graduates now, rising to give presentations, asking everyone to leave but the first sixteen. I like more ideas and energy in the room, and we can break up the size into group of 4-6 to generate ideas which can then be tested in the larger group. Thanks to some leadership from students we also split the class sometimes to get intermediate size discussions going. The small and intermediate group discussions are led and debriefed by students. The small groups also produce OHPs, a few of which are shown on the day and the whole lot I photocopy and distribute at the next class. These OHPs show students what the others are doing and give me points to comment on at the start of the next class. So as much as I hate standing by the photocopier and I hate even more rinsing off the OHPs for re-use. I am always left with green and blue fingers. I switching to scanning them and emailing them to the class list and putting them on the unit web site, but the scanning is imperfect and cumbersome so far. Andf I still have to clear the blasted OHPs.
In closing, for me these books are mysteries. I have read each many times, written on some aspects of all of them. Worked with students reading them, too few times, and yet there is still so much more in them. They really are X-files. The truth is in them, not out there.
No mere mortals could have written such books. Like Michael Jordan, these authors came from another world. When we try to fathom these books, I am reminded of the opening scene of Space Odyssey, when the apes discover the monolith. These books are monoliths, whole, with slick and smooth exteriors that defy our attempts to enter into them, understand them, and master them.
An image I took from the DVD.
Not much else for me to say. By the way here is the School of Athens referred to above.
There are web sites that dissect the picture. Suffice it to say that each figure is an historical person and even Alcibiades is here with the plumed helmet on the left.
The end. (For now.)