University Writing Center

July 2008

Howdy, I’m Gabriel and welcome to Write Away, the faculty podcast of the Texas A&M University Writing Center, bringing you news, tips, and ideas for making your students better, more innovative writers.

Today we’re talking to Dr. Scott Austin, Professor and Undergraduate Adviser in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. Dr. Austin completed his undergraduate work at Yale University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Austin.  He taught at Boston University for nine years before arriving at Texas A&M in 1988. Dr. Austin is the author of 2 books, Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic in 1986, and in 2007 Parmenides and the History of Dialectic.

Dr. Austin — There were a couple of hundred years of philosophy before Socrates where people did the beginnings of science, the beginnings of logic, the beginnings of argumentative technique. Parmenides was one of these pre-Socratics who had tremendous influence on everything that followed him, especially on Plato and Aristotle,  but also on the development of logic and dialectic, which is argumentative technique. If you really want to find out what makes western philosophy western, I think you have to read Parmenides in his historical context and try to figure out what makes him tick.

Gabe — Dr. Austin teaches Philosophy 410 which is under consideration for becoming a writing intensive or W course.

Dr. Austin — 410 is classical philosophy so we start with these people who are called the Pre-Socratics and then we spend a long time reading Plato and a good section at the end of the course reading Aristotle. So there’s a paper on the pre-Socratics, there’s a paper on Plato and there’s a paper on Aristotle and they have to be at least 7 pages long. And I encourage them to come up with their own opinions and to let me know what those opinions are, but also to document and defend their opinions because that’s kind of what goes on in philosophical writing. And above all to imagine how somebody would object to the opinions that they’ve expressed, and of course since it’s history of philosophy, to base the opinions in the text. I always have an indefinitely many rewrites so that if somebody does get a grade that is lower, they have some power over the grade and they can rewrite and then I’ll work with them individually. I’ve always tried  to make myself available for consultation about drafts and rewrites, but recently I’ve opened that up to e-mail drafts and a tremendous number of drafts come in by e-mail. This really helps improve student confidence.  It helps students to feel that the instructor is eager to see their stuff before they have to turn it in for a grade. And that he or she is able to give positive commentary, positive feedback as well as critical feedback. That builds trust. It gives them a chance to feel that they can really express themselves without having somebody jump on them and giving them a low grade. It also gives them a chance to rewrite and edit. If you correct all the mistakes that are there in grammar and spelling it gives people the feeling that you’re really reading their stuff instead of just scribbling down a few comments at the end.

Gabe — Dr. Austin explains that critical review, both peer review and self analysis, is a naturally intrinsic part of philosophical dialogue.

Dr. Austin — In my line of work, ancient philosophy, when we come up with a book manuscript or when we come up with an article manuscript, we always send it out to other people for comments before trying to publish it and often those comments are integrated into the writing by means of footnotes which acknowledged the comment and the author of the comment. So it’s all dialogue. The ancient text is there but it’s sterile unless there’s a dialogue between or among persons which makes it live. The beginning of the whole process is to get used to the idea that yes your comments are important and yes you should put them down in written form and yes you should have somebody else look at them. For some people it’s the very first time in their lives that anybody has asked for their opinion on anything in a serious way. Or it’s the first time in a class that anybody has ever asked them: What is your opinion? How do you justify it? How might someone criticize it and how might you reply to the criticism, which is just a basic intellectual exercise. And it may not be very complicated and the student response may not be very sophisticated but if you get a response, you may have begun to do your job as a teacher. The magic of student writing comes when people think with their fingers on the computer keyboard or while holding a pen. That way they get used to taking their own opinion seriously–seriously enough to write them down in dialogue with the text or in dialogue with the teacher and after awhile that process becomes internalized. It takes place after a while inside your mind instead of in dialogue with someone else and that helps you think. You become a much better thinker because, having internalized the critical voice, you can then become self-critical.

Gabe — I asked Dr. Austin about effective lecturing in his classroom.

Dr. Austin — The ideal that’s always in front of my eyes is Socrates which is a one-on-one dialogue between one person and another in a concrete life situation where they’re talking about things that are important to them as persons. Nothing’s more boring than a lecture where the teacher just talks all the time. It’s boring for me and it’s boring for the students. But if there’s the feeling of spontaneity the feeling of freedom you’d be amazed at how much of what you have to say anyway can be and maybe ought to be said in response to student questions. Hey what you just said reminds me something and here it is. Now what do you think and you can go back and forth.  Given the right atmosphere, about twenty or thirty percent of the class will talk and that’s usually enough to keep the rest of the class interested.

Gabe — Dr. Austin wraps it up with some valuable insights students get from taking philosophy.

Dr. Austin — The thing that distinguishes ancient Greek philosophy, especially ethics is the emphasis on becoming an excellent person, an excellent human being. And the philosophers, as opposed to some of  the other people in the ancient world, thought that you can do that by asking yourself what your values were, how would you define them, how would you defend them how would you illustrate them and how would you act on them. And there was such a thing as taking up the philosophical life. You know, for the rest of your life you would value human excellence more that you would value things like power or social status or financial success. Not meaning that you would go off  in the desert for the rest of your life. You’d be integrated into society. I think the Greeks are very good at giving people, especially young and idealistic people, an idea of what human excellence might be. Of five or six different ways to define what excellence is and at showing how trying to be excellent, I mean none of us are excellent but we try, trying to be excellent is a way to be happy. Not just feeling good for a day but the kind of active engagement with the ideals of excellence that can motivate  your whole life. Knowing what your values are and  how you would defend them is an indispensible process of coming to figure out who you are and that’s what a liberal arts education should be. So if I can somehow bring in it about that people have a really good time going through that kind of investigation, with reference to  great works of the ancients that would be my goal, my primary goal. And writing is indispensable.

Gabe — Thank you for joining us. Write Away is a production of the Writing Center at Texas A&M University. This podcast promotes the mission of the Writing Center by highlighting effective writing instruction. For resources to improve communication and writing ability, please visit our website at writingcenter.tamu.edu.

We’d like to thank Dr. Austin for his time today, and for his dedication to writing instruction at Texas A&M. I’m your host Gabriel, please join us next time. Have a great day, write away.