APELC Reflections
As I wrote in my notes to the freshmen, it’s been some time posting these reflections, more time than I initially said, but here they are anyway. Some of you may read them, so I’m happy to share my thoughts.
I congratulate all of you who decided to stick with me the entire year. I challenged you back in August, explaining that that I didn’t really care what was in your hearts, that I was more interested in what was in your heads; that you’d become critical thinkers, readers, and writers; that I didn’t want you to write to please me or parrot back what I told you in class; that I didn’t have all of the answers, and that I wanted you to draw your own conclusions about what you read and explore your own assumptions about language and reality. And by the end of the year, every one of you was doing all of these things, successfully, easily, despite your early misgivings that first quarter.
This class this year, as many of you expressed in your reflection letters, was the most difficult you’d had to date, and I was pleased to read such. Too often in the past, I know, too little was asked of you, and I was glad to watch you struggle (and struggle with you) to really earn your marks. Each of you should be proud of your accomplishments and progress from August to May.
If you take anything with you from our experience together, I hope that you’ll remember that it’s your obligation to:
Attend the world around you and the events of the day. You’ll be inheriting the world and her problems very soon, and you’ll be expected to make decisions about how best to solve them, and, to that end,
Understand that all ideas are not equal and all ideas have consequences. If all ideas were equal and true then conservatism could never logically be distinguished from liberalism, slavery from liberty, totalitarianism from republicanism, success from failure, good from bad, wrong from right, et cetera. By their nature all ideas are different from their opposites, and some better than others.
Evaluate people (and their ideas, their behaviors, their morals, their beliefs, et cetera) often but with compassion, critically but with fairness. As we’ve discussed, although we’re taught to “never judge others” we do all the time (that proscription itself is a judgment about how we should behave). Indeed, if we’re to survive for any length of time in this world, we must judge others and their ideas and their motives.
That last one is probably the hardest for many of you to grasp, but I suggested that we’re often hesitant to judge others because when we do we necessarily open our own selves and our own ideas up for similar scrutiny. That’s disturbing to us because we might then begin realize that we might not understand why we believe what we believe, what we know and how we know it, that our worldview isn’t as internally cohesive or externally coherent as we’d like. It forces us to examine our own assumptions about the world and defend our understanding of it. We’re told to leave our personal moralities and philosophies out of our judgments and our public participation they engender, too, but you’ve discovered that this is clearly impossible: our personal moralities and philosophies necessarily inform our judgments and thus direct public action.
Atticus Finch, the hero of one our foundational freshman texts, is a discriminating man. He makes judgments, notably about the Ewells, and we’re meant to admire and emulate his character and integrity and his cool ability to discern what’s right and to follow through with action. Atticus is guided by his personal conviction, he has a highly structured worldview, and he’s able to defend it.
Whenever you approach a subject, I encourage you to use the three classical and incontrovertible laws of thought, those first principles upon which Western philosophy is based, which Ed Miller, in his introductory philosophy text, Questions that Matter (1984), casts metaphysically and epistemologically:
- The Law of Excluded Middle: A thing either is or it is not; or, a statement is either true or false;
- The Law of Identity: A thing is what it is; or, a true statement is true;
- The Law of Non-contradiction: Nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect; or, a statement cannot both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect.
As you observe and attend (yellow) the world, use these laws to analyze and understand (blue) it, and then evaluate (green) it.
As you well know, forbidding inclement or severe weather, my door’s always open and classroom space is always available. The site and its resources are always available too; I’ll be making some changes before the school year, but it’ll be updated and live by the time school starts.
I look forward to seeing you next year. If I don’t see you, I’ll at least be listening for your name at graduation. I hope the best for you all.