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Learning & Teaching

This Philosophical Life

Chris Fotinopoulos on growing up to become a philosopher, on good and bad education and on Socratic dialogue in high schools.

Socrates’ gadfly stung me out of my adolescent apathy soon after I read his Apology in a collection of Plato’s dialogues called The Last Days of Socrates. This was my first philosophy book, given to me by my high school teacher about twenty years ago.

He was not my first philosophy teacher; my mother was. And although I didn’t know it at the time, her teachings were similar to those of Socrates which were, quite simply, directed to living the good life. The bigger question was: how?

I didn’t see my mother as my teacher, until an encyclopaedia salesman who was doing his usual rounds amid our migrant working class neighbourhood during the early 1970’s asked me if I could name my first teacher.

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