Jingoism

It seems I underestimated the differences between Europe and the Anglosphere when it comes to nationalism. This is a little ironic given that the word chauvinism is due to a Frenchman. (My guess is that the Vichy Régime just exhausted any nationalist pride they might have had left. Now they stick to pride in their food and fashion, which is far less dangerous.)

Recently France's minister for immigration, Eric Besson, was chatting to a journalist about a range of issues and made this comment:

Je pense par exemple qu'il serait bon -- aux Etats-Unis c'est banal, en France ça reste parfois compliqué -- que tous les jeunes Français aient une fois dans l'année l'occasion de chanter la Marseillaise

Apparently this is true, their national anthem is almost never sung in school. They learn it once when they do the French Revolution but it's not sung every school assembly like in Australia. Once a year certainly doesn't sound like an overkill to me.

After I asked Cîndy about this, she went on to tell me about one time in high school when it seemed appropriate and a student requested that they sing "the Marseillaise" in class. Her teacher said, 'No, let's sing something else. How about "the Internationale"?' That put me in mind of Billy Bragg at first but then I remembered that it was originally a French song. So we sang the first verse through in French and English then I said to Cîndy, 'One time when we're with a group of Americans I'm going to ask you to tell them what song your teacher taught them. I'll be standing nearby to pick their jaws up off the floor for them!'

Teaching Utilitarianism

A memorable thought experiment from Peter Singer's famous paper, "Famine, Affluence and Morality":

if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.

One of my students' recollection:

...let's say there is a small child drowning in a pile of mud, and you walk by and see this. It is very easy for you to save the child, just step in the mud and grab her. However, is it of moral significance for YOU to do so... your pants will probably get ruined and maybe you think that somebody else will do it, however you have to weigh your options. Singer was trying to show that you might think, "Of course you save the child's life, it's just a pair of pants," however, those pair of pants might be of equal or more significance to the man than saving the girl's life. The principle states that it is all about your opinion and what is significant to you.

What the hell am I doing wrong!?

At least when students badly misunderstood philosophy of science I could tell myself, "They just don't get it because it's a bit technical. They're not bad people!" I'm not looking forward to discussion of the death penalty later in the semester.