My principal goal in teaching philosophy is simple, but crucial: To teach my students how to think through important philosophical problems for themselves.  Although this might sound too general and, perhaps, too obvious to function as a teaching philosophy, it can indeed provide substantive direction to one's teaching.  This should be clear if one recognizes that in order for students to work through philosophical issues, they need to be both equipped for the task and motivated to undertake the challenge.

The focus of skill development must vary according to student ability, but the core skills remain the same: one must be able to evaluate arguments and to express ideas clearly.  In my classes, students develop analytic skills through practice, not just by example.  Although I assign a variety of different types of texts from diverse traditions of philosophy, when possible I prefer to assign self-contained essays defending a position on a particular problem.  I typically begin class by motivating the problem, and then through a series of questions I have the class attempt to formulate the key arguments.  Ideally, once we have a very clear statement of the argument we can produce a formalization—putting the argument in premise and conclusion form.  This not always necessary, but exposing the logical structure and precise assumptions of an argument makes it far easier to see its problems.  Through guided-class discussion, we then raise and reply to objections.  In the process, students develop both philosophical competence and confidence in their philosophical abilities.  They see that by slowing down and clarifying ideas, they can refute what might have at first appeared to be an unshakable position.  This can make for a very exciting semester. 

Although there are a variety of ways in which one can write philosophy, I think that the quickest route to profundity in philosophy is to be as clear as one possibly can.  Unfortunately, if my education is indicative, most students receive far too little feedback on their writing.  The reason why is clear: It takes a lot of time to provide detailed feedback.  Well, I take the time.  And I have developed a method for making it manageable.  In the first part of the semester, I assign two very short papers worth only five points.  The first paper simply asks the students to write a one page paper explaining an argument—the core of any paper in our discipline.  I make extensive stylistic comments.  It comes as a surprise, but students quickly learn just how difficult it is to be clear.  On the second paper, I ask the class to write a two page paper that explains an objection to an argument.  Again, I do not ask for evaluation.  I merely want the students to work on clarity, showing precisely how an objection functions as an objection.  Here too I reply with extensive feedback. 

I repeat the exercise on the midterm and final exam, where I typically ask for explanations of key arguments and objections.  I assign two longer papers that ask for evaluation.  On the longer assignments and on the exams, I focus my comments on content.  Last semester I started providing typewritten comments for each student.  This allows me to say more and to say it more clearly.  As a result, I saw tremendous improvement from nearly my entire ethics class.  Many of my students appreciate the effort:

• "Dr. Smuts provides more extensive written feedback on assignments than any other professor I have had at Temple.  He is genuinely interested in doing his part to make his students better writers and better critical thinkers.  He is in the absolute top tier of professors I have had here at Temple."  (The Good Life, Spring 2009)
• "The extensive comments on our writing also helped a great deal." (The Good Life, Spring 2009)
• "Great feedback on papers.  Very helpful!" (Mosaic I, Spring 2009)
• "His method for grading our papers was extremely beneficial to my writing."  (Philosophy of Film, Fall 2008)
• "Aaron Smuts is a fantastic professor.  I've never had any professor be as thorough in evaluating and commenting upon papers."  (Philosophy of Film, Fall 2008)

In addition to providing more written feedback than is customary, I give more tests and quizzes than is standard in philosophy.  At the beginning of each class, I give a quiz that asks the students to explain a key phrase or example from the reading in a sentence or two.  The quizzes are graded with a check or an x.  I learned this technique from the film scholar David Bordwell, who is an exemplary teacher.  The use of quizzes has several benefits.  Primarily, the quizzes are intended to verify that students are reading.  This serves my overall goal, since you cannot engage with the issues very effectively if you have not been exposed to the texts.  In addition, the quizzes serve as an early warning mechanism for students who may be having trouble.  I ask students who fail two quizzes in a row to come see me during office hours.  Further, the quizzes make it clear that I expect everyone to work on the readings.  I have tried to inculcate the healthy feeling that it is embarrassing to fail a quiz unless you have a very good reason.  Again, most students appreciate that the quizzes help keep them on track.

My use of take-home tests serves a similar purpose, but has an additional benefit: From experience I learned that teaching is by far the best heuristic device, since it forces you to work through an issue from the inside.  The process of reconstructing an argument and explaining it to others is immeasurably beneficial.  I would like the students to be able to reap similar rewards.  Rather than using class presentations, I use take-home tests.  I typically avoid presentations because when they are poor the entire class suffers, taking up valuable discussion time.  Hence, I prefer to use tests in most undergraduate classes to force the students to explain the arguments to me.  This way all of the students get to present several topics, not just one or two.

Coming to the classroom as someone who loves philosophy, I used to think that most philosophical problems were self-motivating and that I would need to do little to engage students with the issues.  It did not take long to realize that, although most philosophy majors may be interested in the subject matter of almost any philosophy course, this is not the case for non-majors.  My general strategy for getting students to think about the problems through their own initiative is to force them to ground the problem in something from their own lives.  For instance, I recently taught a Great Books style intellectual history course where we read Sappho.  In one poem, Sappho invokes Aphrodite to help her win the affections of a young woman.  I asked the class to assess whether the invocation of a god was any different from casting a spell or using a potion, and if falling in love through such means would be significantly different from normal.  To encourage discussion, I asked the students to say how they would respond if asked “Why do you love me?” or how they would want a lover to reply if asked the question.  We moved from mere comprehension of poetry to the philosophy of love and immediately arrived at the question of whether we can rationally justify our love for another.  Suddenly the class was alive and several students asked for recommendations on what they could read to pursue the issue.  In response to student interest, this semester I am teaching a class on the philosophy of love.

To engage students, I try to develop rigorous courses focused on problems of profound human significance, such as: love, death, and happiness.  In my two and a half years at Temple University, I have taught a wide array of courses in philosophy, from the philosophy of mind, to the philosophy of film, to the philosophy of death.  My core teaching responsibility in the department is the ethics requirement for the major, which I will have taught four times at the end of this academic year.  The first time I taught the course, rather than present a standard menu of normative ethical theory, I decided to pursue a wide variety of important topics in ethics that the students would not have encountered in other courses, such as: theories of welfare, some meta-ethics, and whether we have reason to be moral.  The class was successful, but the survey model introduced disruptions and hindered depth.  So, the following semester I decided to focus exclusively on the good life, mostly reading in the well-being literature.  The experiment was extremely successful.  The philosophical ability of my students increased dramatically.  We were able to achieve a sophisticated grasp of the debates in a core area of ethics.   This semester I am focusing on the philosophy of love, which introduces core issues in value theory and axiology via a topic of universal interest.  Soon, I am going to teach the course focused on meta-ethics.  Not only does the focus enhance learning, it gives the students some choice in what they want to study and expands the breadth of offerings in the department.

I take great joy from teaching.  Indeed, one of my principal ambitions is to become a great teacher.  In my second semester of full-time teaching, students in my philosophy of death class wrote: 

• “He was very easy going.  It was made very clear that we could ask a question or make a comment and not feel stupid.  It was a fun environment!!  He is one of the best professors I've had and many people feel that way.”
•  “Great course.  One of my favorite of my college experience.  Great instructor.”
• “Phenomenal teacher.  One of the best in the department.”

The following semester, students in my philosophy of film class noted:

• "His enthusiasm for the material made it easy to get interested and stay involved.  He was also extremely capable of paving an accessible route to abstract concepts.  Dr. Smuts is the best professor I have had."

And last semester, in my course on the good life, students remarked:

• "He is in the absolute top tier of professors I have had here at Temple."
• "[His] overall zeal and enthusiasm for the content inspired a similar excitement within me to actually engage in the texts as much as possible.  Smuts is flawless."

Overall, teaching philosophy at Temple has provided exactly what I wanted most out of an academic job—the opportunity to teach the courses that I wish I could have taken to bright, engaged students.