The General Structure of the Classes

It is a ten-week program that can be expanded or condensed.
Step-by-step study guides and weekly essay assignments.

The tutorial program is a ten-week program though it can be stretched easily into twelve weeks or more if the need arises and condensed to four or five weeks if one is ready to work hard and nearly every day, if not every day. Each week, in terms of the ten-week course, the student will be provided with a study guide, a series of multiple choice questions followed by commentary taking the student step-by-step through the reading for the week. It is a teaching method I have developed and used with considerable success over the past years in my on-line college classes. (See Sample Study Guide) The study guide is a very good surrogate for lecture as it takes on through the main points of the reading. The only significant difference is that the student must discover the answers from themselves, but from a limited list of possibilities, instead of having the answers provided by the professor in the form of lecture.

In addition to the step-by-step study guide the student will also be asked to complete an essay question each week that is drawn from a short list of prepared questions covering the assigned reading. This weekly essay will be assessed and commented upon with the aim of improving one’s skills in reading and writing in general and in reading and writing philosophy in particular. The educational focus of the class will be improving the student’s ability to read and comprehend complex material and on improving the student’s ability to write cogent, consistent and well formulated arguments. Whether one is preparing for college, a career in law, or merely is tried of losing arguments with one’s friends work in the art of reasoning usually pays good dividends.