Statement of Teaching Philosophy

George Hartley • Ohio University • January 18, 2011

Yesterday a former graduate student, while visiting me at my house, confided in me about an issue concerning him. “I have a real dilemma,” he began. “Each month, it seems, I come across some new remarkable book that completely reorients my thinking, my knowledge, my passion, and each book makes me want to leap off into the new direction it lays out for me. But when will this process stop? When will I ever feel ready to make some kind of definitive statement without worrying about the next book or idea that’s then going to change my life all over again?” I told him that this was one of the most exciting dilemmas that the true life of intellectual passion can offer us. Furthermore, despite my having been teaching for over thirty years—or perhaps because of this experience—I frequently find myself in the same situation. But in those thirty years I learned to savor these moments and to see them as an integral part of the learning process, one that takes place in the process of teaching itself for those who have learned to trust the ways in which the world opens itself up to our fascination. And bringing this passion into the classroom itself, modeling this kind of life-long engagement with learning, is crucial to my life as a teacher. I am the professor who teaches through the process of my own learning. In these moments, my passion becomes infectious.

Following John Holt, I trust the student’s innate love of learning. Each one of us lives to learn, although not each of us is presented with the environment in which we might best learn, those situations and communities capable of fostering our unique desires and capabilities. My goal, within the admittedly restrictive context of the standard academic environment where WHEN and WHERE we must learn are dictated by quarter or semester structures of time and classroom structures of place, is to provide as much as possible a range of ways of approaching HOW we learn and WHAT we learn and, most importantly, WHY we learn. “Why, exactly, are you here in this class?” I ask my students. “Why has society at large decided that this particular topic is sufficiently important enough that we should tend to it? What kind of people does such an education prepare us to be? What kind of world is our education making possible (or, simultaneously, impossible)?”

And these questions drive my teaching practices. The world I and many others would like to see is one made up of self-actualized human beings who know why they do what they do, and what the consequences for other beings (human and beyond) might be as a result of those choices and actions. What kind of world have we inherited? What possibilities and limitations appear to have been placed before us? How will we act in response to those opportunities and challenges in order to make a better world? And what critical role do we, in all of our intelligence and passion and splendor, have to play to bring such worlds into being? And what forces, habits, and prejudices must be reckoned with—as well as openings, excitements, and dreams—in order to make such transformations possible?

I therefore attempt to democratize my students’ learning experiences as much as possible. While I choose the materials we work with (primarily because of the time restraints of the quarter system), I provide my students with constant and varied ways of responding to the material. I urge them to come to class prepared with individualized responses to the readings for that day. In small groups they discuss those readings and see if they might come up with some kind of consensus concerning the readings or, if not, theories for why they disagree. After each group’s presentation of their findings to the rest of the class, we see if there is some larger consensus or, again, explanations for the lack of consensus. Only at that moment, when the class has arrived at a set of questions, concerns, and exhilarations, do I then offer my accumulated knowledge, my understanding of the issues with which they have come to identify, and my own love for this ceaseless learning process. In these and other ways I have allowed them to make the material and the learning process their own. Just as I hope they will as a result be better prepared to go forth and shape the world according to their ideals, passions, and compassion—that which Socrates describes as the ceaseless loving proliferation of learning.