The more I teach the more I am convinced that students would benefit across content from being exposed  to some basic philosophy. It came up today in class when students were very critical of a dramatic production that was part of an all school assembly.

The play was deemed, by a few students, to be “unrealistic”. I asked how they came to believe this and the basic answer seemed to be that because they (as individuals or a small group) had not experienced the scenario in the play that it must not be realistic. In some sense they were arguing that if they have not experienced something or conceived of something that it is not real.

I pushed them on this a bit and asked them to write down a response to the following quesiton:

How do you know what you believe is true?

Most students answered along the lines of – “I believe something is true when I have evidence for it, I have seen it or someone I trust tells me it is true.” A few others gestured toward the idea of coherence by pointing out that they tended to believe things that fit with other things that they believed. I then asked them to write a response to:

How do you know the things you sense are true?

The period ended before we could talk about this. I am curious to see what we arrive at tomorrow. I do want to present them with a short section of Descartes.