Josh Fuentes Darci Cather English 1302 July 31, 2016 The Good of Philosophy Being in a room filled with a bunch of people who have committed terrible crimes can be very intimidating. Teaching these type of people is an even bigger challenge. A teacher, by the name of Alan Smith, had published a book about this particular experience. His book, Her Majesty’s Philosophers, talks about Smith’s experiences he had while teaching at a prison. He introduces the readers to the lifestyle of the prisoners and their reactions towards learning. One day one of the prisoners, Karl, asked what good it was to learn about philosophy. Learning a new thing is great. A person is never too old learn something new. However, is it necessary for a person, much less …show more content…
Everybody in the world faces problems every day. It is part of people’s way of living. Creating a problem is no tedious task, finding a solution, overcoming it that is the tricky part. Philosophy helps people overcome their problems. Philosophy is the study of problems about knowledge, existence, values, and reason. The study of nature, and reality through deep thought. (Biscontini 1). Philosophy questions what is known, why people exist, which values are correct, and what is good and bad reasoning. Compared to these questions, the everyday problems that are encountered seem very small and easy to solve. Smith introduces the reader to one of the many problems he had while in the prison, the problem of authority (48). He described himself as being a weakling, afraid to use the authority he had to put the class in order. The guards, even the prisoners would get after Smith because he would do nothing to keep the class under control. One day one the prisoners got off topic and was talking about abortion, how if they had known that his cell neighbor would turn out to be a “murdering nutcase” would it not have been a good idea to abort him. As it should, it started a ruckus. One of the other people …show more content…
Philosophy is just way of living and not important or not needed. On certain levels what they say is true. Philosophy is not needed to survive; it is not required to be taken. Philosophy can and is a person’s way of living. For those reasons they believe Smith is wasting his time teaching prisoners about philosophy. However, philosophy benefits a person on multiple levels. Philosophy teaches a person how to communicate, helps a person develop new skills, helps a person with their problems, and gives insight on a new way of thinking for everyone about everything. It can be agreed that the average person does not need to learn philosophy, however, Smith is not wasting his time teaching the prisoners because the prisoners would benefit the most from this. They would be able to apply what they learned inside out into the real world. They would contribute more to society than they would have if they did not learn philosophy. It may not be necessary for the average joe, but it is completely essential for prisoners to learn about