{"id":2885,"date":"2020-09-29T13:59:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T13:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/09\/29\/former-students\/"},"modified":"2020-09-29T13:59:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T13:59:26","slug":"former-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/09\/29\/former-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Did I help them or harm them? Probably not much of either.&#0160; They&#39;ve forgotten me, and I have forgotten most of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">The few excellent students I had made teaching somewhat worthwhile, but the unreality of the classroom bothered me and the unseriousness of teaching those with no desire to learn.&#0160; It was like trying to feed the sated or seduce the sexless.&#0160; Philosophy, like youth itself, is wasted on the young.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">There were a few older students. They were eager and motivated but their brains had been ossified by the boring repetitiveness of mundane&#0160; existence. They wanted to learn, but they were old dogs unreceptive to new tricks. The picture I paint is in dark tones and your experience may differ. I am well aware of that.<br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">What do I mean by the unreality of the classroom? Compare the dentist&#39;s office. You don&#39;t want to be there and he&#39;d rather be playing golf. But you want his services, and he is intent on providing them in a professional manner.&#0160; It is a serious setting in which money, that universal measure of seriousness and reputation, are on the line. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">Most students in a required course don&#39;t want to be there, and getting them to participate is like pulling teeth.&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did I help them or harm them? Probably not much of either.&#0160; They&#39;ve forgotten me, and I have forgotten most of them. The few excellent students I had made teaching somewhat worthwhile, but the unreality of the classroom bothered me and the unseriousness of teaching those with no desire to learn.&#0160; It was like trying &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/09\/29\/former-students\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Former Students&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}