Christopher Biffle

This text is an insult to students. It is extremely condescending. The tone it takes towards students would barely be appropriate for 10-year-olds, much less fully grown adults. While I can, to some extent, understand the motivation behind making philosophy more accessible to students who have never encountered it before, this book goes far beyond that, addressing the reader as if she were a complete idiot - for example, devoting an entire section of a chapter to explaining what the word "illusion" means, or putting little word-definition boxes in the margins of each page (as one student of mine observed, "He actually took time out to define superfluous!"). The accompanying instructor's manual actually explains, motion by motion, how the author finds it helpful to teach his classes using Charades and getting his students to "repeat after me."

This text is an insult to professional philosophers. It makes a mockery out of our discipline. It makes philosophy trite and banal. Philosophy should be hard – considering it asks some of the most important and difficult questions there are, and these questions have existed, unanswered, for thousands of years. Pigeon-holing masters of philosophy into quaint little clichés and using stick-figure illustrations to demonstrate deep metaphysical and epistemological problems is akin to a bad joke.

This text is embarrassing to teach. I started both my classes this semester by apologizing to my students, and explaining to them that just because the author of this book thinks they’re stupid, that doesn’t mean I do. I should never have to begin a semester that way. The textbook is structured as some kind of workbook – including the types of exercises that you might ask a child to do – for example, fill-in-the-blank exercises at the end of almost every paragraph:
"Putting Locke's ideas into my own words, he says _______________. But what he means is _______________." or "My senses tell me that the unique characteristic that a glass marble shares with all other marbles is _______. So _______ is a glass marble's form, its essence. The matter of a glass marble is __________. The form of a glass marble is _________. ________ could not be the unique characteristic that a glass marble shares with all other marbles, because many things, such as __________, could be made of __________."
(I'm not joking. Those are direct quotes from the text - Let's make extra certain that our college students understand the word "unique," right?)
In addition to all the fun workbook activities, we get the added bonus of illustrations. I haven’t read a picture book since I was 12. I can’t believe I am forced to ask my adult students to do so.

On top of all that, this text is actually inaccurate in a number of places. The author uses outdated translations, proclaims as truth blatant falsehoods in some places (Anselm is considered by most commentators to have defeated the critiques of his ontological proof of the existence of God? The major divisions in ethics are relativism and absolutism?), misrepresents the views of a number of philosophers, misinterprets others ("eudaimonia" means "happiness"?), and often puts forth his own very shallow and uninsightful interpretations as accepted doctrine. This is erroneous at best, and dishonest at worst.

Given a choice, I would never subject another student to this tripe. One of my students' final exams this term included a short note at the end, thanking me for making the course interesting despite the fact that he "found the book for this class utterly retarded." His words, not mine.… (plus d'informations)

The teaching approach Biffle describes in this manual would hardly be appropriate for sixth graders, much less a college course. He suggests doing charades in front of your students, and performing exercies which require the class to, "repeat after me." As a student, I would likely walk out of a class with an instructor who treated me that way.

These absurd teaching tactics are, in part, motivated by the pedagogical goals Biffle sets for himself:
- increase student attendance
- reduce tardiness
- get students to complete their reading homework
- get students to participate energetically in class
- teach students to read as well as their skills will allow
- teach students to write as well as their skills will allow (v)

While Biffle feels it is his responsibilty to teach his college students how to read, note that nowhere on this list does, "teach philosophy" or "give students a thorough understanding of the history of Western thought" appear. When the bar is set so low, it's little wonder that pedagogy is focused on in-class games instead of actual teaching & lecture strategies.… (plus d'informations)