Mediated Learning Newsletter

Vol. 5, Issue 5: March 2006, page 2

David Sherman: Autonomy Is The Educational Goal

by Johnny Lott
Director, Center for Teaching Excellence

David Sherman

David Sherman, a 2005 co-winner of the Helen and Winston Cox Educational Excellence Award for members of the College of Arts and Science, is a faculty member in the Philosophy Department. Like the other co-winner for 2005, David hails from New York but found his way to Montana via the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied French and German philosophy under Bob Solomon and Doug Kellner.

According to Dr. Sherman, the study of philosophy gives people tools necessary to pursue the good life. While few students in lower level philosophy classes go on to rigorously pursue the academic subject, the lower level courses in ethics and existentialism may help students develop critical skills that an informed citizenry needs.

Teaching students how not only to reason but also to question is part of what Sherman refers to as an “education for autonomy,” a phrase, he suggests, that motivates his own philosophical influences, such as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Adorno. As he talks about Kant’s What Is Enlightenment?, one can feel his love of the subject. He is serious as he expands on Kant’s claim that autonomy involves breaking out of a “self-incurred tutelage,” which he sees as an unreflective desire to be led by others. The proper use of reason, which is essential to autonomy, is “the most important skill that one can impart to students.”

David has students scrutinize arguments of great thinkers to teach not only that there are no arguments beyond question but also to teach that it is incumbent on them to make sense of even those things that seem to be absolutes, rather than simply accepting them in the way that is offered up by others. What’s more, he has students scrutinize their own positions. In his ethics class, students look at current moral issues such as abortion, the death penalty, welfare, and environmental ethics from a variety
of perspectives to allow them to justify their own beliefs. They rigorously assess not only their positions but also competing ones. He does not try to change the students’ positions but rather enriches their understanding of those positions.

By tackling controversial, topical examples, where the rubber hits the road, students see that what they previously learned from the great moral philosophers, such as Aristotle, Kant, and Mill, is truly relevant to their current concerns. They come to see the concrete necessity of being able to think in abstract terms. While moving students through abstractions in philosophy, David uses humor, a good pace and a wealth of examples. His love of the subject, his presentation of rigorous ideas in ways students
understand, and his inclination to ask them very complicated questions are strategies or techniques for his classroom. He believes that “it is both arrogant and a disservice to students to think that they cannot learn something. What we as teachers have to do is find ways to make the material understandable without watering down its import, for such ways do exist.”

David contends that the skills he seeks to impart are equally indispensable to a principled liberal position or a principled conservative position, to a thriving liberalism or a vibrant republicanism. Most importantly students develop the skills to be ready to enter the public debate from an educated, rational viewpoint rather than an uninformed, irrational one, and that it is only in this way that democracy can flourish.

David describes the philosophy department as a great department, and he gratefully says that he has had wonderful, tremendously supportive, senior colleagues. He also talks about wonderful students who are willing and able to learn. He points with pride to two of his students who were serious contenders for Rhodes Scholarships. When asked what he finds lacking at the university, he responded “financial support.”

Finally, when pressed on what recommendations he would make to junior colleagues concerning teaching, he replied “have a sense of humor,” “be honest with yourself and your students,” and, most of all: “over prepare for classes.” Clearly, he is doing things well. His students care for him and his classes, and the Cox Award nomination came from his colleagues without his knowledge. The award is more than enough justification for him to continue pursuing his Muse.