PHIL 292.001 – Field Work in Philosophy: Introducing Philosophy in Primary and Secondary Schools

Instructor: Delaney Thull. This course meets TR 3:30 – 4:45 p.m. in CW 208.

Democratic Deliberation Across the Rural-Urban Divide

In this experiential learning course, students will have the unique opportunity to combine the philosophical study of ethics with service to the community. Students will master the major ethical frameworks philosophers use to think about the rightness and wrongness of actions, our obligations to others, and moral life more broadly. Students will also learn how to distill complex philosophical ideas and how to facilitate productive discussions with a young audience.

With this training in ethical theory and pre-college pedagogy, undergraduates will serve as coaches and advisors to new startup high school teams in rural North Carolina who will be competing in an invitational event near the end of the semester. Participants in the course will be partners in developing models for rural outreach in philosophy, and will work alongside an innovative UNC program, NHSEBBridge, which promotes equity and access within the National High School Ethics Bowl and within our education system more broadly. Over the course of the semester, undergraduates will develop pedagogical resources on ethics, and implement educational events for our community partners.

The Ethics Bowl competition sharpens participants’ ability to reason through complex moral issues and invites us to consider the philosophical and civic foundations of education. Students will reflect on the ways in which our discursive practices can sustain and impede the health of our democracy.

The service component of this course will (hopefully!) be conducted via in-person site visits, supplemented by online interactions.

Permission of the instructor is required to enroll in this course. Please email dthull@live.unc.edu. 

Prerequisite: 2 PHIL courses.