Things I've Learned with Richard Bett, professor of philosophy
Professor Bett, who specializes in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, talks about his days at Oxford and the pressure to "publish or perish"
I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Publish or perish." All of us are expected to do scholarship, and if you're invited to do a paper, usually, unless you're really busy, then you'll probably say yes.
N-L: What is teaching at Hopkins like?
RB: Teaching at Hopkins is great in that the students are really driven. They are usually very smart; there are very few basic writing problems, compared to the school I first started at. Texas-Arlington, that was a very different kind of thing. There were people who really did have trouble with stringing sentences together, and there's not much of that here.
At least at the undergraduate level here, the things that students are driven towards are not always the things that I am interested in teaching. They're driven, but they're driven to get into medical school, which has only an indirect relationship to the kind of thing that I teach.
There are going to be versions of that kind of issue everywhere. You wouldn't want huge numbers of people to go into some subject like philosophy. I think that's very good. One thing that's very good about the American higher education system. In Britain, you go to university just to study one subject, whereas here you don't specialize until much later.
Some of the most valuable work we do in humanities is teaching classes to people who are not going to be specialists in that field but who will pick up some interesting ideas that will hopefully in some ways, form their life. We have a number of majors, and some of them, many in fact, are second majors with pre-med. Because having a second major in philosophy will show medical schools you are a well-rounded human being.
N-L: How is Hopkins's philosophy department?
RB: It's pretty good. I mean, we're small, as all Hopkins departments are. This guy does this report every year that ranks philosophy departments. We don't score as high on it as we might think we should, in part because that ranking system very heavily favors larger departments.
N-L: What is teaching at Hopkins like?
RB: Teaching at Hopkins is great in that the students are really driven. They are usually very smart; there are very few basic writing problems, compared to the school I first started at. Texas-Arlington, that was a very different kind of thing. There were people who really did have trouble with stringing sentences together, and there's not much of that here.
At least at the undergraduate level here, the things that students are driven towards are not always the things that I am interested in teaching. They're driven, but they're driven to get into medical school, which has only an indirect relationship to the kind of thing that I teach.
There are going to be versions of that kind of issue everywhere. You wouldn't want huge numbers of people to go into some subject like philosophy. I think that's very good. One thing that's very good about the American higher education system. In Britain, you go to university just to study one subject, whereas here you don't specialize until much later.
Some of the most valuable work we do in humanities is teaching classes to people who are not going to be specialists in that field but who will pick up some interesting ideas that will hopefully in some ways, form their life. We have a number of majors, and some of them, many in fact, are second majors with pre-med. Because having a second major in philosophy will show medical schools you are a well-rounded human being.
N-L: How is Hopkins's philosophy department?
RB: It's pretty good. I mean, we're small, as all Hopkins departments are. This guy does this report every year that ranks philosophy departments. We don't score as high on it as we might think we should, in part because that ranking system very heavily favors larger departments.
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