Emmanuel levinas biography summary rubric

On Faith and Value in Education

On a regular basis I meet with prospective students (and their parents) in the attempt to recruit them to come to the institution where I teach, Furman University. On the one hand, I am always happy to do this because I figure that anything philosophers can do to let students know what philosophy is all about is a good idea. On the other hand, however, I am similarly happy to do it because it gives me a chance to change the narrative that is so dominant in contemporary culture regarding the “point” of college itself. Many people have begun to ask: “Is college worth it?”1 However, usually when that question gets raised it is articulated relative to a narrow conception of “cost” rather than what we might term an expansive conception of “value.” When I meet with those students (and their parents), I often ask them what they hope to get from college. Far and away the most common answer is “I hope to get a job.” Jobs are important for the material stuff of existence, so that this is the first thing that the young student thinks about is entirely understandable within a cultural framework that so dominantly stipulates one’s existential significance in monetary terms (just ask a car company how much a life is wort

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