I’m a 74-year-old former teacher who now works part-time as being a drivers’ education instructor for the private sector driving instructor located inside the western suburbs of Chicago. Generally speaking, this driving instructor attracts 15 and 16-year-old, academically inclined students who prefer your driving practise outside of the school day. This private-sector option allows these students to load their respective class schedules on top of honors classes (not driver’s ed) that, upon senior high school graduation, increases their chances of being accepted in to the college with their choice.
In short, I drive with a lot of really bright kids from 6 different public high schools and 4 different private high schools, a lot of whom are straight A students. And every one of the kids, in their own personal unique way, is acutely serious about exploring the various issues a part of living an existence that’s worth living. But ironically, just one of these nine respectable high schools supplies a class from the field that’s specifically made to explore exactly what means to live your life that’s worth living – namely the concept of Philosophy.
And with this one secondary school, philosophy emerged strictly as a possible elective. This means just a very small amount of that school’s students ever go eyeball to eyeball and wrestle with history’s most profound and influential thinkers starting from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Aquinas, Descartes, Rousseau, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, to name a few. While kids at the opposite eight schools have zero prospects for learning anything about these intellectual giants besides their names in a historical context.
A Simple Solution to a Profound Problem
But fortunately for him or her I drive with, I have a simple solution. Allow me to educate you on a podcast entitled “PHILOSOPHIZE THIS.” The Seattle based producer/narrator Steven West does a 100 % spectacular job of translating some very complicated philosophical concepts into plain English. He speaks to the latest generation inside their terms. He also does a fantastic job of providing a context during which these iconic figures is usually understood and fully appreciated for contributions for the history of the human race.
West is producing his wonderful (free to the asking) podcast since 2013. It currently features almost 150 twenty-five to thirty-minute episodes. The context he provides allows each episode to square on its own. This means that it is possible to listen to them in chronological order. Or you are able to pick and choose randomly but still finish on top of a useful knowledge that very few senior high school or college students with this nation opportunity truly avail themselves.
It’ll Make Your Wheels Turn…
I confess, inside my own case, “Philosophize This” borders on being addictive. I can hardly placed the bloody thing down. But moreover for this communique, many students who finds some time to give Steven West’s podcast a great shot, will likely be introduced to critical thinking experiences that, inside the name of STEM, are ignored by modern educational systems around the world. In contrast, West will result in your mental wheels to convert in ways you’ve never experienced before. I promise! And, because so few students occasion to avail themselves to extremely insightful possibilities, you’ll automatically get to be the smartest kid within your class automatically!
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