Too Young in College for a Philosophy Course? (attend, preacher, experience)

[RDSLOTS]

When I attended college for the first time, from 1973-77, and took Philosophy courses, I was never so frustrated as what I was, sitting in an auditorium with about 100 other freshmen, every MWF.

I would complain to my Dad, who shared a funny story from one his first classes in philosophy at LSU.

Seems it was a lovely Spring day, and the professor wanted to explore the 'what makes something what it is' question, and he chose to call on a fellow sitting on an outside row, not far from my Dad. He started with, "Mr. So-and-so, what is that?," pointing to the floor. The fellow answered with, "What? My shoe?"

"Your shoe. And what makes it a shoe?"

This went on for some time, the poor fellow coming up with responses that were evidently the wrong ones, because one question led to yet another and another and another.

Finally, the student kicks his shoe off, and flings it out the window.

The professor screams at him, "Mr. So-and-so, why did you throw the shoe out the window?!"

"What shoe, sir? what window?"

According to my father, that student got the A for the day.



I always liked the story because, for me, it illustrated my own frustration in my philosophy class at the time. Do you think college is too young for some to delve into philosophy? I thought I was prepared, what, with some of the BS we used to toss around in HS -- this was the 70s, mind you -- but I got to UNC, and was just l-o-s-t in that first class.

[bchris02]

My philosophy class was an athiest instructor trying to push athiesm on the students. Thats all it was. I am just now starting to recover my old faith.

And no, I think college is not too young for philosophy class...if 20 year olds can't understand it who can? What universities should do is make sure instructors teaching philosophy are teaching it right.

[cncracer]

My professor was one of the best speakers I ever knew. He had been both the P&R professor at UNCW and a preacher in Wilmington, NC for years. He was a wise and well traveled man who let us all know the person who had never questioned his faith was not a true believer and may never be one. He stressed the act of thinking over the path of following. I think he never had a problem with the questions from the hippie non believers in the back rows. Actually I think he liked us. As a very technical person I had thought I would hate the class, but I like it, and took several others just to hear his views. It must have been the right age for my lessons. He died in the mid 1980, and still every so often things he said pop up in my head. Sort of like tonight.

[stycotl]

i think that certainly the teacher makes a difference, and i think that even 20-year-olds are pretty dumb over all (i'm 27, and still have rocks for brains).

but i think that college is way too late to begin introducing philosophy and ethics to people. i think that there need to be level-appropriate ethics classes taught at all ages. it is the primary responsibility of the parents to make sure that children are raised to be productive, healthy members of society, but even in a perfect world, further education can only help. and we live in a far from perfect world where many parents are either apathetic, uneducated themselves, or are intent on raising the most abused, abusive, destructive kids that they can.

aaron out.

[june 7th]

No, I don't think one is too young for philosophy course in college.

June had philosophy courses in high school, and she is from the exact same "era" that you are!


Take gentle philosophical care.

[coosjoaquin]

Man the stories of philosophy always amuse me, i heard that on a philosophy exam there was the question:

"what is courage?"
And the person who was given an A left the page blank

[charolastra00]

Philosophy courses have always come easy to me. I took a class called Theory of Knowledge in high school which was sort of a cursory look at mostly modern philosophy in addition to long extended discussions on education, linguistic, and knowledge theory. I did very well in the class and it took next to no effort for me.

My freshman year of college I took an aesthetics course with our best philosophy professor and really enjoyed it. It was a lot of that crazy abstract thinking which was great! However, it's not for everyone and if you weren't encouraged to think like that from a young age, it's much harder to get into. My parents had me reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull (I think that was part of "that era" as well!) and the Metamorphosis at age 8 and continued on with introducing me to philosophy as I got older so writing papers on it was just a natural progression for me.

[Tesaje]

As philosophy is an exercise in following logic trains, HS is probably not too young. Adolescence is the time of life to question everything as the child begins to grow up so philosophy is a natural.

But it should be revisited throughout life as one gains experience and hopefully maturity.

[Wendell Phillips]

Many years ago, I began, desultorily, to read. It is probably ironic that the first book that I read was Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which is considered to be the first novel in the English language. Since then, I have read a great number of books, and more than a few of them several times. It is not uncommon that I read an entire book within the space of a single day. I am not a particularly rapid reader, but I suffer from insomnia, and for these many years books have been the companions of my sleepless hours. Even so, there are many, many books that I have not read; great rivers of literature and learning that I have yet to course. More recently, my reading has become more select, and my studies more focused. Some of the books that I read now have been out of print for several centuries, and only available in the great libraries or in private collections; and some I must need translate myself, which can be very tedious and time-consuming. Still, whenever I start a another book, it is with that same spirit of Robinson Crusoe when he takes up his salvaged copy of the Bible, and begins, for the first time, to read it in earnest.

[RDSLOTS]

Maybe I had some lousy professors. I could say the same of a few nuts I encountered in my psych and soc classes.

I was an English major, and loved the philosophical discussions that were often spin-offs of the literature we read and discussed. And I was one of those odd kids, who even in elementary school, loved the BS sessions, sitting around and contemplating all the what-ifs of our own world and the universe.

But, I was incredibly frustrated in that 101 course. I think, unfortunately, I abandoned other courses in the department, due to that experience. I thought I had failed.