PHILOSOPHY AND STUDENTS' FUTURES
Unless the American Negro today, led by trained university
men of broad vision, sits down to work out by economics
and mathematics, by physics and chemistry, by history and
sociology, exactly how and where he is to earn a living
and how he is to establish a reasonable life in the United
States or elsewhere, unless this is done the university
has missed its field and function and the American Negro
is doomed to be a suppressed and inferior caste in the
United States for incalculable time. (Du Bois 1973, 98)
Choices Of And Preparations For Careers
The department tries to show how purely theoretical and
abstract philosophical questions direct the details of
life, and are in turn shaped by those details. A philosophical
sense of life has consequences for choices of friends and
family relations, careers, where to live or travel, how
to work and spend money, how to handle success and adversity,
and finally how to face death.
Philosophy must cover a broad range of territory if it
is to be true to its synoptic nature. Awareness of this
range is a necessary condition for good philosophical research.
Courses in the department encourage students to continue
their philosophical investigation in courses outside the
department and throughout the rest of their lives. The
department encourages students to pursue research directly
connected to philosophical aspects of their majors, their
careers, or their life plans.
The department has an interest in helping students see
how the College of Arts and Sciences supports other Colleges
like Medicine, Pharmacy, and Nursing. Students should see
how compulsory science courses in chemistry and biology
will give them a conceptual and strategic preparation for
making competent judgments about diagnoses and courses
of treatment offered by health professionals at critical
moments in their lives.
In the same manner students should see how theoretical
courses in history, philosophy, political science, sociology
and anthropology connect directly to the practices and
unsolved problems of legislators, judges, and lawyers.
Student's Selections of Life-long Problems to
Address
The department pays attention to connections between philosophy
and the pursuits of the more practically oriented schools
in the university for three reasons:
- To introduce in provocative ways the intractable problems
whose solutions form part of the raison d'etre of the
university
- To show students in dramatic ways the relation of
theory and practice
- To allow students to make informed choices about their
majors and careers.
The department also encourages students to get together
with professionals in the practical arts in both formal
and informal situations. The department hopes that these
professionals will counsel students on the basis of practical
experience, discuss internships, and criticize research
the students will produce in their junior or senior years.
Most importantly, the professionals would indicate through
concrete examples the problems in their fields that cry
out for solutions.
The department encourages students to examine relations
between the so-called "liberal" arts and the
practical arts like law and medicine and engineering in
the hope that these kinds of reflections will lead the
students to make reflective choices about the directions
of their lives.
Philosophy In The Professions
Choosing a major in philosophy as a foundation for a career
carries a number of advantages. Appendix I shows the usefulness
of such a major for students whose professions will require
them to take standardized exams such as the Law School
Admissions Test (LSAT) and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).
Philosophy's attention to close readings of texts as well
as written and oral arguments gives students a statistical
advantage on these exams.
Philosophy is also advantageous for students who are going
directly into the work force. Employers are impressed with
students who have demonstrated an ability to master very
difficult texts and to connect areas of experience that
often seem to have no relation to one another. A number
of employers have the idea that if you can learn philosophy,
you can learn anything.
Many contemporary jobs require extensive training and
employers are interested as much in whether a student can
learn as in what a student knows. In an interesting job,
what one needs to know to do the job well will change continuously
throughout one's life. A major like philosophy, with its
call for sweeping synthesis, bold innovation, radical criticism,
will prepare students for jobs whose descriptions must
vary with cycles of technology, as well as new political,
economic, and cultural challenges.
Because philosophy is the foundation of every other academic
discipline, philosophy is perhaps one of the finest choices
for students interested in double majors. A philosophical
point of view grounds innovative work in any academic subject
and uncovers hidden connections among numerous aspects
of life. Students applying for medical school distinguish
themselves from their competitors if they present majors
in both philosophy and chemistry or biology on their applications.
Law school applicants with majors in philosophy and economics
or anthropology stand apart from other majors.
The department's faculty has a strong interest in philosophy's
connections to other subjects. In addition to their Ph.D.'s
in philosophy, a number of members of the department have
degrees in literature, science, and law. Members of the
department have co-taught courses with faculty from engineering,
physics, biology, classics and medicine. The department
has sponsored lectures, colloquia, and conferences with
faculty from nearly all the liberal arts and sciences as
well as medical, law, nursing, and pharmacology schools.
The department especially encourages students to pursue
questions that interest them by seeking out professors
in other disciplines who approach their subjects in philosophical
ways. The department is now trying to develop a network
of such professors across departments and schools at Howard.
In encouraging students to pursue philosophy across the
curriculum, the department is not trying to collapse different
subjects into one another, but only to reinforce the pursuit
of one subject by showing its connections to all others.
Problem-Solving In The Senior Honors Thesis And
Other Student Research
Students have taken their interest in philosophy into
other subjects in imaginative ways. Inspired by an introductory
philosophy course's attention to African-American philosophers,
an architecture student wrote a research paper on an African-American
philosophy of architecture. The student now has the long-range
research goal of using that paper as a foundation for a
book on the subject.
A nursing student in an introductory philosophy class
criticized the nursing profession with the bold hypothesis
that the profession should have as its main objective caring
for rather than curing patients.
Faculty in the nursing school who had helped develop its
mission statements were able to give the student critical
research advice. The student was subsequently invited to
present his paper at a national conference on biomedical
ethics sponsored by the philosophy department. An engineering
student in a course on philosophy and technology wrote
a hundred page essay analyzing dangers of contemporary
forms of technology.
Students who produce research like this are able to present
it to admissions committees at graduate or professional
schools or to prospective employers. A philosophy major
who wrote a senior thesis on a philosophy of world government
was offered ten thousand dollars as an inducement to attend
the University of Chicago law school.
Another major used a senior thesis on cultural criticism
as part of his successful application to study anthropology
at Berkeley. A particularly resourceful major not only
presented a critique of U.S. education from an African-American
perspective as his senior thesis, but started his own philosophy
journal while still an undergraduate at Howard.
Students have produced the Howard University Journal of
Philosophy for over a decade now in order to give students
from Howard and other universities an opportunity to publish
their research. Faculty encourage students in both introductory
and upper level courses to write their research papers
with the aim of publishing them in the Howard journal or
other venues.
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