Most of the teaching hours in the school are based on memorizing data that we will then transfer to an exam that will assess, essentially, our ability to memorize and meekly display the knowledge given. However, this is far from creating future critical and skeptical thinkers, individuals who yearn to learn and change their minds.
In the interest of fostering these values, as well as curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual humility, a concerted teaching school called the Intellectual Virtues Academy was born in 2013 .
Three core values
Intellectual Virtues Academy operates based on three core values:
- Culture of thought : ask questions, try to understand, practice habits of good reasoning.
- Self- awareness: practice self-reflection and become self-aware.
- Openness and respect : strive to create a strong sense of community characterized by collaboration and respect for the thinking of others.
Loyola Marymount University philosophy professor Jason Baehr is one of the founders of the Intellectual Virtues Academy. If you are a teacher, you can obtain more information on how to cultivate these virtues and incorporate them in your school in inteellectualvirtues.org, as well as you can download Educating for Intellectual Virtues: An Introductory Guide for College and University Instructors . As Bahr himself defends:
There is much applied philosophy today that takes moral or ethical theory and applies it to a practical domain: environmental philosophy and bioethics, for example. What we are doing is taking the theory of epistemology and applying it to the domain of education.