Teaching Pragmatism Pragmatically: a Promising Approach to the Cultivation of Character

Teaching Pragmatism Pragmatically: A Promising Approach to the Cultivation of Character

James O. Pawelski

Teaching pragmatism effectively in a college setting is not easy. Institutions of higher learning are typically resistant to the application of pragmatic methods in the classroom. Teachers of pragmatism themselves may not be fully aware of the intellectualistic influences and constraints on their own pedagogy. This report of experiments in applying pragmatic pedagogy to character development may inspire teachers of pragmatism to develop further their own methods for teaching pragmatism more pragmatically. Character educators may see pragmatism as an effective method for a new and powerful approach to the cultivation of character in the classroom.

A few years ago, while teaching my first seminar on pragmatism, I asked students to assess the value of our study of pragmatism for their lives. One student responded that she was very pleased to be studying pragmatism because it helped her develop her philosophical views, but she also said she was frustrated because she didn’t know how to apply it. When I first read this comment, I didn’t know what it could possibly mean. After all, isn’t pragmatism itself practical? If you’ve studied pragmatism, how could you possibly not know how to apply it? What I did not realize at the time was that, in spite of what I thought were some pretty innovative pedagogical approaches in the course, I was teaching pragmatism in a way that subtly undercut its message. This is because I had underestimated the degree to which American colleges and universities are bastions of intellectualism. Woven into the warp and woof of institutional structure and practice are assumptions about what is appropriate in the classroom and what is not. Appropriate in the classroom is the training of the intellect. In many classrooms, this training takes place chiefly in the form of the broadcasting of information, where an instructor in the front of the room lectures to students who are seated in chairs bolted in rows to the floor. Even though in my small seminar, my students and I got to sit in comfortable chairs 128 JAMES O. PAWELSKI around a large table, and even though there was much more discussion and much less lecturing than in a traditional classroom, it was still intellectualistic activity that dominated our time together. The very structure of our colleges and universities is intellectualistic. Students’ brains are sent to classrooms, where they are filled with knowledge. Their bodies are sent off to the practice fields for exercise. And their emotions, if they have any problems in this area, are addressed by residence hall staff and student counselors. If the body, the emotions, and the will are addressed in the classroom, it is through the filter of the intellect. It is acceptable to address the intellect intellectually, the body intellectually, the emotions intellectually, and the will intellectually. But to address the body somatically, the emotions affectively, or the will volitionally would seem quite inappropriate in most college classrooms. This kind of partitioned instruction is highly problematic. It allows students to learn about certain issues and methodologies, but it tends to rule out of bounds any but intellectual treatments of these issues. Not only is this problematic for treating complex issues, but it also runs against a growing amount of data from neurophysiological research that indicates a close connection between reason and emotions. Based on his extensive work with patients who are emotionally deficient due to neurophysiological damage, Antonio Damasio argues that emotional health is a prerequisite for sound thinking.1 This would imply that pedagogy that seeks to train the mind must not leave to one side the emotions – and, by implication, the body. In intellectualistic settings like universities, it is very difficult not to teach pragmatism – as I did – intellectualistically. Taught this way, pragmatism becomes a matter of mere textual study. Its focus on theory and practice becomes a theory about theory and a theory about practice. Teaching pragmatism intellectualistically is both ironic and tragic. It is ironic because the pedagogical method then undermines what is being taught. It is tragic because pragmatism has so many resources for replacing flawed intellectualistic pedagogy with more holistic methods. Given the realistic constraints of the intellectualistic structures of the colleges and universities in which we teach, how can we work toward teaching pragmatism more pragmatically?

1. Teaching a Method

In my own case, I began to arrive at some tentative answers to this question when I tried to become clearer about what pragmatism itself is. This is not by any means an easy task, and I certainly don’t pretend to have a simple and complete definition of pragmatism. But one place to start is with John Dewey’s review of William James’s Pragmatism. In “What Pragmatism Means by Practical” Dewey takes the center of James’s pragmatism to be the pragmatic method, described by James as the “attitude of looking away from first things,