Sian Charles-Harris is a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut. Sian grew up in Trinidad and Tobago and is a former New York City public school teacher. When she is not teaching or writing, Sian enjoys cooking, practicing yoga, social media public scholarship and enjoying the outdoors with her two children.
What excites you about philosophy?
The thing about philosophy that I find to be absolutely exhilarating is that the more I do philosophy, the more my ideas about what philosophy is, and can be, are expanded. With every lecture, reading, and conversation I engage with, I am reminded that philosophy can be so much richer and more inclusive than what I originally believed it to be. As an educator, I strive to make knowledge more accessible and desirable to my students and philosophy is how I have learned to do that. Philosophy’s propensity to do what Lewis R. Gordon calls, “bring about a theory, meaning and understanding to our experience” is unique in what it offers to scholarship in all disciplines. Philosophy invites us to ask good questions, to wonder, to be curious about ourselves and the world in which we live, and ultimately, to understand that nothing is as simple as we think it to be and no reality is as complete as we believe it to be. The most exciting philosophers are the ones whose identities, forms of thought, and talk don’t necessarily fit the standard philosophical model of a propositional calculating machine or agonal debate. I’m excited about how comparative and cross-cultural philosophy can illuminate topics that matter to people who are most violently impacted by class and racial struggle, especially those who don’t yet consider themselves to be philosophers.
What advice do you wish someone had given you?
I wish someone had told me that education is about developing the curriculum and community that you need and that it involves as much unlearning as it does learning. I wish that I had started questioning the completeness of disciplinary knowledge earlier. Although my journey to philosophy was in some ways a solitary one, my recent studies at UConn have brought together threads from years of education and experience and ‘folk wisdom’ from friends and family that I weave together through philosophical thought. Here I have had the opportunity to make meaning with colleagues across a range of fields and I’ve found a sense of belonging among philosophers who take seriously the notion that philosophy is truly transdisciplinary.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
I am interested in the question of truth-seeking in education and how truth in ideas can empower people. Simply put, I often wonder what is the role of philosophy in truth-seeking in relation to other disciplines. My background as a teacher and then social scientist who studies philosophy causes me to grapple with the Althusserian question of how do we, as philosophers go about trying to isolate truths – those that are produced by the sciences and scientific practices and truths that emerge from sites of political contestation? How do we conceptualize philosophical practice as political practice and as the practice of the production of scientific knowledge or truths ? This is something I found to be underexplored, even in the realm of the prolific and ongoing contestations between materialists and idealists and empirically and historically informed social metaphysics. In my field of curriculum theory, I grapple with the ways in which the concept and study of philosophy of education exists, at least nominally within most disciplines, yet I think the notion of transdisciplinarity between the discipline of philosophy and discipline-specific teaching and learning has remains underexplored. Deep philosophical questions about justice, truth, identity, equality, social construction, reasoning and logic, ethics and aesthetics are all central to the concept of education and the practice of teaching. However in my experience and training in Curriculum and Instruction, the study of philosophy is surprisingly disconnected from the curriculum of teacher preparation. Pre-service teachers are required to craft a Teaching Philosophy without having studied philosophy, and thus ideas from living philosophers of education have little impact on how teachers learn to teach, on student experiences in classrooms or on what scientific knowledge gets marketed as ‘best practices’ for teachers. I am eager to engage with ideas about the notion of teaching as philosophical work and the link between philosophical thinking and the practice of teaching, which is to say, I would have these disciplines ‘communicate for the sake of reality’ in the words of Lewis R. Gordon.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on my dissertation, which is tentatively titled “Playing in the Shadow of Modernity: English Education, Social Justice and The Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” which is a nod to Toni Morrison’s book, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination and Sylvia Wynter’s textured genealogy of the European conception of the human. (I’m quite proud of that title and I hope to write a dissertation worthy of such a clever turn of phrase). In my dissertation, I will draw on Sylvia Wynter’s “cultural model framework” to interpret how the field of English Language Arts Teacher Education (ELATE) operates as a product of euromodernity, specifically looking at how ELATE has taken up notions of anti-racism and social justice in relation to teacher education and methods of teaching literature in secondary schools. Wynter’s cultural model framework “redefines, in scientific terms, the prescriptive rules and the specific cultural rationality that function as an ideology” and produce distortions in curriculum and pedagogy – distortions which have, in Wynter’s assessment, contributed to the crises in our schools and society.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I enjoy finding the philosophical in the quotidian – in conversations with strangers, in movies, in pop culture narratives and over drinks with friends. Ideas about teaching and learning are never far from my mind. Recently since I’ve been spending more time indoors and consuming more media, I’ve started gathering ideas and resources for a pet project that I’m calling Philosophy for Teachers: Philosophical Ideas and Methodologies for Teacher Education. The goal of the project is to provide educators with resources for a sound introduction to philosophical thinking using examples, anecdotes, and resources for personal and professional development. I envision this project with both epistemic and ethical ends in mind — I want teachers to embrace their existence as active thinking and storytelling agents who make the world a more truth-oriented place in the process of their teaching.
What technology do you wish the human race could discover/create/invent right now?
I’m not convinced this is what the human race needs right now, but this particular human would really enjoy having access to Star Trek TNG technology: my own personal Data (programmed in multiple pleasure techniques as he is), a transporter beam (beam me to the beach, Scotty!), a universal translator (oh the conversations I’d have), and a food replicator, so I could really immerse myself in a practice of gastropoetics.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
