philosophyteachers.org/talking-teac...

Thanks! I’ll have to check it out. He is also a fan of dragons. 🐉

Still in progress: Need to think of more explicit tools for identifying assumptions. I’m still kinda just telling them to go find some assumptions but how can I scaffold this better?

I think using kinds of claims might work—what ontological epistemological, normative assumptions, etc. are at play?

Overall goal: Continue to emphasize that identifying what we *do* with language is a crucial aspect of critical thinking.

Finally, a small group activity in which I give each group some questions and ask them to identify assumptions that are either explicitly built into the question or likely given a particular context in which the question is asked. Example exercise: “Is it ok to lie if the lie doesn’t hurt anyone?l

Next we turn to Tarantino’s blogpost on assumptions about questions (question essentialism, question intellectualism, question ownership, and question completion).

Are these assumptions we make about questions? Are they true? Are they helpful/harmful?

Next we talk about what makes assumptions good or bad. The goal here is to break free of the ‘assumptions are bad’ assumption (point out that we make assumptions about assumptions…Whoa…)

Can true assumptions be bad? (Yes, when?)
Can false assumptions be good? (Again, yes)

First students brainstorm assumptions that they made about our class when they signed up for it. I push them to identify more and more fundamental assumptions.

You assumed there would be a teacher; you assumed there would be other students; you assumed the teacher knows stuff; etc

If time, students write things they are curious about on index cards and small groups will pick a card & repeat the first exercise with a new topic.

A couple key goals:
- Get a new understanding of what questions are and what we can do with them
- See curiosity as a skill that can be developed

Then we become hunters (another curiosity type). We pick one question and talk about what it would take to answer it. We won’t answer it though bc part of what we are learning is a new way to think about questions. We can do things with questions other than answer them.

Next we look for patterns. Can we identify categories of questions that our questions fall into? (Ontological, normative, epistemological etc). We’ll keep this list and continue adding as we discover new question types throughout the unit.

I start with asking students to get curious about curiosity. I invite them to be ‘busybodies’ (one of the 3 curiosity styles Zurn and Bassett discuss) and generate as many questions as we can about curiosity itself. Goal is to fill the board and then some. So. Many. Questions.

Yeah, you’re probably right but not worried about those haters. 🤷‍♀️