Summer

We had an amazing start, weather wise, to this "summer" with much warmer weather than usual. But it has cooled down quite a bit and is even lower than average in temperatures at the moment. But as a result, we are very green and the air is full of sweet perfume from an abundance of flowers. Really quite perfect I think. Classes, meanwhile, have started as usual though it seems there are fewer students this summer. But either way, this is a time when I can catch up on my reading and try to get books read before they are due at the library. It is important, I think, to keep up my fluency in the vocabulary of various aspects of philosophy as well as keep up to date on the newest and most exciting things developing. At time it seems impossible to keep up.

On education

This has been an impressive year for me with regard to education. I have been impressed with the accomplishment of my students and this is especially obvious when their awards and scholarships are taken into account. (I am of course not the reason for their accomplishments - that belongs to the whole school, their parents, their community, and their connections to the media they use, and the weather, the food they eat - you get the idea.) But the end result for me is very positive. From what I see, young people are amazing and learning and maturing faster than ever. Granted, the students (for the most part) that I am associated with come from intact families that are connected to the community, are honest, and industrious. (In short, they meet the criteria Charles Murray describes in Coming Apart as the kinds of families that are not falling apart.) They also are in education for the right kind of education (Again following Murray in Real Education.) The school here (Alaska Middle College School) has avoided the pitfalls that are apparently impacting education in many other communities according to Diane Ravitch. So in my case, the students I work with are among the elite and receiving an elite education and we are protected from many of the statistics that give many schools, even in the same local area, a lower success rate. Our students are already literate, healthy, engaged, motivated to learn, and in touch with modern media. What certainly does still impact what they do is their immersion in modern media and what seems to go hand in hand with that, a decreased attachment to difficult texts (of the paper sort). The Flynn effect is certainly part of the picture here. So their IQ's are rising - as far as I can tell. But their familiarity with details in history, science, religion, and literature - the sorts of things that come from books mostly, has been apparently decreasing. They have fast processors in their brains but little data to process! If a problem they are dealing with can be solved using computer apps and Google they are on it. I suspect as I have heard that most of the news they get comes from the Daily Show. The moral narrative they follow seems to be best explained by Peter Watson. Though there are exceptions of course. (I have to say that the churches they attend are what Charles Taylor calls "thin". All of this makes me feel like I am nicely placed. I am encouraged.

Welcome to Philosophy!

This was sent via Blackboard to the students taking Introduction to Philosophy via the web starting Monday. Some email addresses bounced the message back: Welcome to Introduction to Philosophy! Please have a look at the syllabus posted here: http://wsjamison.uaa.alaska.edu/201501.htm and let me know if you have any questions. This is the correct link for both sections 503 and 591. Everything can be accomplished using the Internet and the text books. Thank you in advance for sending an email message to me verifying your enrolment and making sure we are “connected”. If you do not have your email address updated on Blackboard please do that since I use the email function in Blackboard to email the whole class at least occasionally. You should send in materials on a regular basis following the schedule posted in the syllabus with the first set due May 27. If it takes a bit longer for you to get started because you haven’t received the book or you have been lying out in the sun too long and your arms are sunburned just let me know. Lots of folks take a bit to get started. But as we go further in to the course late work will lose points. I will send replies with comments and the comments are only helpful if you get them before you go on to do more work, so please do not send in everything all at once! You can send work in early if you like but please remember that I have to read everything and think about my replies to you. If your initial efforts are wonderful I will say so, if not I will say so and you have the opportunity to add to your work in response to my comments. All work must be complete by the end of the session – August 2 - to count towards the course grade. Incompletes will not be given except under circumstances that meet UAA policy. Some of the questions you may have for me: If the link from Blackboard does not work you can go directly to the syllabus from my web page at http://wsjamison.uaa.alaska.edu How to answer the short essay papers? I suppose the best way to answer this is to say: These are not meant to be difficult research papers! I am looking for your own views on the topics covered by the readings as well as an indication that you read the materials and understood them. All in all I should be getting 26 separate 150 word papers sent in, as sets of two, over the course for this requirement. Please title each essay with the number of the assignment, for example set 1 is 101 and 102. I would expect that your views would reflect thoughts you had from reading the materials. The topics blend into one another and each includes a lot of ideas on the topic. I am sure you may feel overwhelmed with the possibilities of things you could say. Do not worry! Say what you think is most interesting about the topics. Just go for it. Try not to think too hard about what I might be looking for as the right answer, but instead say what you are really thinking about the topics. Dialogue: To participate in the dialogue: log in to Blackboard and go to the course 201 section 501 or 591 as your case might be and then go to the discussion board that should be under Communications or Tools – for me it is under Tools. This way everyone can respond when they have a chance and you can even start a new threaded conversation. The main reason for this dialogue is so everyone in the class may interact with the other students. Since this is a distance course and there is no time set aside anyplace for us to meet, if you would like to get to know the other students and hear some of their views about the topics this seems to be the most productive way. Because there are two sections this summer and you will only see the dialog in your section I am suggesting in addition you might want to log into my blog and also engage everyone with your thoughts there. But remember that is a freebee and I will basically have no way of keeping track of who is who there (unless you use your real names) so the Blackboard dialog is what I can use for grading purposes. But it should be interesting to see what opportunity this might provide. The blog is a public forum and not just for those registered in classes as is Blackboard. The dialogue questions are posted at http://wsjamison.uaa.alaska.edu/dia.htm and there are links to the topics there that you should check out before typing your response on Blackboard and my blog. To begin with everyone may want to give a brief description of who they are. If you are interested in my BRIEF description of myself I have it posted at http://wsjamison.uaa.alaska.edu/myhist.htm ; but if everyone is so brief no one will be able to read all of them! You should also begin thinking about your term paper since ten weeks (or five!) is not very much time to do a term paper along with everything else you must be doing during a summer in Alaska! Don’t forget the term paper is worth 25% of the grade! You can also go to this page for frequently asked questions: http://wsjamison.uaa.alaska.edu/faq2.htm.

End of the semester

I turned the grades in on time though some students still had not sent me everything. As a result, some received less of a grade than I like to give out. But that happens every year and each student has their own reasons. Today I updated my syllabi for summer and fall. They are mostly done but I am sure there are mistakes to fix. The summer sessions start on May 19th so that is not too far off. We still have graduation on the 13th for the seniors who are students in the Alaska Middle College School. Meanwhile, it is time to feed my home grown mosquitoes, work on the lawn - you can tell mine from the others since they already all have green grass and mine looks like ... well, it looks sort of wild and untamed. A nice thing I am looking forward to is Mother's Day! Also, Saturday we have Rossini's opera playing in HD live from the Met. Kat and I are going to that.

Leading up to final grade turn in time

I sent this out to each class: Remember that I have to turn in grades for the UAA classes no later than the early evening of Wednesday. Please make sure all your work is sent to me by then or the points for it won't be counted toward your grade. At the moment some students have a few things still outstanding. If you have not received comments from me on any of the work you sent please resend it. I comment on everything I get so you should know your grades for everything. If you have not gotten word back I may not have gotten it. I have no problems with you sending me multiple copies if you are worried. Make sure you have my email address correctly too! Many of course are finished already. But as usual, there are a lot of papers still missing which means lower grades for some people. I hope they send them before Wednesday!

Introduction to Logic last class

We had our last session this evening. Since attendance was not mandatory and people were sending in their finals there were only a few people there but we watched A Beautiful Mind together. Since it was such a good movie there was not much critique! I hope everyone has a great summer break and thanks for taking the course with me.