One of the fundamental challenges of teaching is bringing the subject matter to life for your student(s). You have to build, or present, avenues for the learner to engage the material. Teaching philosophy is no different. With so much of philosophical education beginning with the reading of primary sources, helping students to understand the historical significance of what they're reading is one of the first struggles.
Students need to understand that while philosophy is the product of historical figures, those figures were not statues who did their work in a vacuum. The people who created philosophy were, or are, living beings who were, or are still, affected by the world they inhabit(ed). This isn't as difficult to get across with more contemporary philosophers, but it can be an up hill struggle to see an ancient author as an actual person. Classic works like Plato's Euthyphro or Voltaire's Candide use sarcasm to make their points. But, many students who are taking a philosophy class for the first time take the readings very seriously, which can lead to overlooking subtlety, sarcasm, or irony.
I thought that having students attending live productions of these works would be a fabulous way to remove the academic blindfold from the works. The issue is that there aren't many great film versions of classic philosophy, and very few theaters in the area do the classics.
So, I came up with the idea that we should produce our own here at NVCC-AL. So, I approached the head of our Drama Department to see what she thought of the idea. She seems to be very optimistic about the project. I recommended that the project could be an extra credit assignment for her students. She concurred, and thought that it would work best with her 200-level students.
She ask me to find some free versions of the text for her to work from. That I was able to do without difficulty. Plato is long dead, and wasn't fond of frivolous law suits. We're going to meet again before the semester is over.
The project might be ago as early as next semester. I'll keep you posted.
Chris
