![\"aquinas\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/aquinas.jpg?resize=193%2C300&ssl=1\")
This is something I put together recently.<\/p>\nThis is something I put together recently.<\/p>\n
I believe the best teachers empower their students to think critically within the framework of an interpretive and practicing tradition.\u00a0 By \u201cthink critically\u201d I mean the capacity to understand and evaluate arguments and to formulate one\u2019s own views about an issue.\u00a0 By \u201can interpretive and practicing tradition\u201d I mean to suggest that any kind of meaningful discourse is embedded in a human context that arises from particular historical circumstances and that may apply in various concrete ways to contemporary circumstances.<\/p>\n
As a law professor and professor of theological ethics, it is not enough for me to teach \u201cblack letter\u201d rules.\u00a0 Students need to understand the reasons<\/em> for a black letter rule so they can evaluate whether the arguments for or against the rule are sound.\u00a0 But it is not enough for students merely to know how to be \u201ccritical.\u201d\u00a0 Even the notion of the \u201csoundness\u201d of an argument suggests that the argument refers to some source beyond its bare internal logic.<\/p>\n Any argument about law or policy is relatively \u201csound\u201d or \u201cunsound\u201d only in relation to some ideal of human society and flourishing.\u00a0\u00a0 This is why critical thinking must occur in relation to an \u201cinterpretive and practicing tradition.\u201d\u00a0 Students need to learn to think critically about ethics, law and policy so that they are prepared to extend, refine and improve the tradition, in particular as they apply those rules within the concrete circumstances of their \u201cpractice.\u201d<\/p>\n This emphasis on application \u201cin practice\u201d means that I try to demonstrate how high-level theories lead to concrete principles and rules that get worked out in individual cases.\u00a0 In this regard it is useful to employ case law, case studies, historical examples, hypothetical scenarios, and \u201cflipped classroom\u201d exercises that help students experience what happens to theories, rules and principles \u201con the ground.\u201d\u00a0 A classroom is a \u201ccommunity of practice\u201d in which learners are always being formed as whole people.<\/p>\n At the same time, the possibility that the \u201ctradition\u201d as a whole can be improved suggests some external ideals to which even the tradition itself is subject.\u00a0 While all human circumstances are historically contingent and therefore in some sense unique, I believe there is an objective reality that gives authentic shape to our contingent concepts of ethics and the \u201cgood.\u201d\u00a0 Therefore, I believe the best teachers ultimately point their students towards reflection on what is universally good, true, just, and right, even if such ideals can be hard for any human being or human community to understand or apply.\u00a0 Perhaps the best and most lasting lesson any teacher leaves his or her students, to paraphrase Aquinas and Aristotle, is a sense of commitment to the pursuit of a good that is beyond one\u2019s self.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is something I put together recently. I believe the best teachers empower their students to think critically within the framework of an interpretive and practicing tradition.\u00a0 By \u201cthink critically\u201d I mean the capacity to understand and evaluate arguments and to formulate one\u2019s own views about an issue.\u00a0 By \u201can interpretive and practicing tradition\u201d I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-OX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}