thought experiment

Ernest Rutherford, a famous physicist, once said, “We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think!” The kind of thinking he had in mind was thought experiments. According to Martin Cohen, a logician, “Thought experiments harness the anarchic power of the imagination in the service of understanding by contemplating what is not but could be.” In the spirit of Cohen’s comment, write a thought experiment about schooling that describes a change in the circumstances of teaching and learning in schools. Discuss 2-3 important consequences of the change. State a moral dilemma that could arise given the change you have proposed. (Here are some examples of thought experiments about schooling: 1) Upon arrival at school each day, every student must undergo hypnosis designed to make them attentive to their teachers and remember everything they study in their classes. 2) School funding has changed. Schools get funding for operations and equipment needs; but instructional monies now go directly to teachers. Each teacher gets $2,500 per student to spend on their classes for teaching the curriculum they have been provided. 3) Teacher certification requirements now include training in gun safety, gun maintenance, gun operation, and marksmanship. Teacher job requirements now include teachers carrying locked and loaded firearms while at work. 4) The comprehensive curriculum has become folded into a curriculum of student- selected topics. Students choose a topic of interest to them and become experts in that topic by studying it in curriculum areas such as art, language arts, math, music, science, and social studies.)

Cohen, Wittgenstein’s Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments 103-111 (read the 7 Laboratory Rules) (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) https://linguistuss.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/wittgensteins-beetle-and-other- classic-thought-experiments_1405121920.pdf and Kingston, “The Pluralist Argument for Moral Dilemmas,” Philosophical Frontiers 4, no. 1 (2009): 69- 82.