Over the past nine weeks I’ve been taking a philosophy class. It’s quite awesome and I’m a much happier person because of it. It’s not about learning names and birthdays of philosophers. It’s not intellectual at all, and it’s not dry, boring book learning. It’s about becoming happier, and his is done through a combination of meditation and contemplating koans and stuff. It’s the best two hours of my week.
So yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend. She’s a good bit younger, and still in college. She was bemoaning the fact that she flunked her math midterm. She wants to get better grades.
I mentioned that I had my class the next day, and that it’s a class with no grades. She looked really puzzled and asked “If there are no grades, how do you know if you’re doing well?”
I’ve been smiling about that ever since. Today in class I told everyone about that, and everyone laughed. Then it occurred to everyone… How DO you know? It was a naive question, but a pretty deep one. Our homework for the week is to contemplate it.
Is the primary question the specific “How do the people in this class know that they are doing well in the absence of grades?” or the more general “How does one know if one is doing well in a class in the absence of grades?” or the even more general “How does one know if one is doing well without concrete measurements of one’s progress?”
Good questions. One might ask if the question has meaning at all, though. In a class on happiness and wisdom, what would a grading system look like? What would earn one an A?
If one has begun to contemplate the deeper meanings of apparently shallow questions, and to find levels of meaning which they would never before have noticed, then that person is doing well in his/her phiosophy class.
One student said if you’re happier now than you were before the class began, you’re doing well. I like that one too.
I think that my friend is still of the belief that the reason one goes to class is so that one can get good enough grades to advance to the next grade. Or get into a better school next year. I don’t think that she has enough life experience to appreciate learning for learning’s sake.
If you take an adult ed course on how to bake an apple pie, will you make better pies if you get an A than if you get a B? If you get an F, will you not be issued your pie liscence and be forbidden by law to bake?
[Worf and a few other officers are about to play parrises squares]
Lieutenant Worf: “Rest assured, Commander, we will be victorious, at whatever the cost.”
Commander William T. Riker: “Worf, it’s just a game, a friendly little competition. You work up a sweat, you have a few laughs, and you make new friends.”
Lieutenant Worf: “If winning is not important, then, Commander - why keep score?”
I know because there is something I know that, for as long as I can remember, I have known and because there is something that, for as long as I can remember, I have not known. I know that I have not known this because I know it now and I know it now because I knew that since then. With that seemingly innocent tongue twister, I can say “I know this and that”, and I can say, quite innocently, “I do not believe in solipsism”.
Did you make that up or is that a quote? It’s reminiscent of R. D. Laing but I’m pretty sure it’s not him.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the question, and I have so many answers already. The biggest one is “I’m getting a whole lot out of it.” Sounds like a passing grade to me.
I wrote that myself. It is not a quote, though it reads like one.
There was a 13-year old boy who believed, among other things, ESP. And this 13-year old boy read Stephen Hawking’s Universe. He took Clifford’s maxim and, applying the maxim, did not believe Stephen Hawking’s conclusion. Stephen Hawking’s conclusion: “He came to the conclusion that it is only people who have not developed their analytical faculties beyond that of a teenager who believe in such things as ESP.” That 13-year old boy was me. (I took a Logic course when I was 23 where I learned Clifford’s maxim, which, as I noted, I applied when I was 13. I got a C+ in the Logic course and, unlike the many courses throughout high school and college in which I received an A+ and enjoyed, this was the only course in which I received less than an A+ and enjoyed.)
There was a 13-year-old boy who believed, among other things, ESP. And this 13-year old boy read Stephen Hawking’s Universe. After reading Stephen Hawking’s Universe, he did not believe in ESP. That 13-year old boy was not me.
