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Everyday Things
In my post of Tuesday afternoon, I made brief mention of an exercise in my environmental ethics class involving a pencil: In my environmental ethics class, I gave each of six groups a single no. 2 pencil – a classic yellow Ticonderoga, as it happens – and asked them first to write down everything they already… Continue reading
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Charlie Hebdo
I have only a brief comment on the murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. I worry that there may be something unseemly in the haste with which commentators and demonstrators have politicized the event, taking up the particular deaths of twelve particular human beings as symbols for this or that cause, or as the… Continue reading
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From the Archive: Value Compression
As I’m busy getting the new semester underway, I’ve turned once more to the archives of my other blog, The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth, for an older post of what I hope is enduring interest. The following was first posted on September 26, 2013. *** Value Compression I have been reading an account of a… Continue reading
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More on Electronics in the Classroom
Following up on my post from last week, I discussed the use of electronics in the classroom with each of my two classes, today. I told students that I used to ban electronic devices, and why I thought I needed to do so, but noted that I lifted that ban when I switched to problem-based… Continue reading
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What I Ask My Students to Write
In my first year of developing and implementing a problem-based learning approach in my ethics courses, I spotted and moved to correct any number of design flaws, small and large. By the end of that year, though, I realized that a well established feature of my courses would have to change. I had to do… Continue reading
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What Students May Expect of Me
I’ve already posted the learning outcomes from the latest version of my course syllabus. I aim to make those outcomes as clear and complete as possible, as it seems only fair to let students know up front what will be expected of them. With this new revision of my course design, though, it occurred to… Continue reading
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Offices
Today, for the second time, some officers of the NYPD turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio when he spoke at the funeral of a fallen comrade. They were protesting what they perceived as the Mayor’s failure to support rank-and-file police officers during a turbulent fall. This strikes me as an especially delicate matter on… Continue reading
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Dreaming of Failure
I’m not sure when I first started having them but it was fairly early in my career: at least twice a year, at the start of a new term, I could expect the arrival of what I soon began to call teaching-anxiety dreams. At first, they were fairly mundane. I don’t recall any dreams in… Continue reading
