In this week’s Philosophy Friday, 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winner for General Nonfiction, James Forman, Jr. — a three-year EXPLO Instructor who went on to launch the Maya Angelou Charter School and is now a Yale Law Professor — discusses the importance challenging your own perspectives.
Problem-solving business concepts, class assignments — even relationships — can often be less about strategizing and more about perspective-taking. Once we have the capacity to see things from another point-of-view and apply it adequately, we are more likely to prevent misunderstandings, enable constructive conversations, and achieve unexpected solutions.
If we just spend our time talking to the people with whom we agree, it wouldn’t be the right approach to democracy and it also wouldn’t be the right approach for me to live a full, happy, and engaged life. It gets incredibly boring to be with the choir all the time.
At EXPLO, we encourage the pursuit of lifelong learning — which means we are constantly doing our own studying up, reading on, or relearning the concepts that we teach throughout the summer. Here are some fun links that we've been recently reading on challenging your own ideas and perspectives.
School of Life launched Cards for Perspective: A set of 20 cards featuring fresh perspectives through which to look at life
Is the structure of the internet designed for a participatory democracy? Nick Couldry, from London School of Economics, on the digital age of community and collaboration.
P.S. If you are interested in reading James Forman, Jr.’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning book, “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” you can find it here
At EXPLO, challenging your own perspective and ideas takes many shapes, forms, exercises, and events. Just a few EXPLO experiences that students have tried that to help expand your point-of-view in a summer at EXPLO include:
Like this content? Subscribe now and receive weekly emails in your inbox every Friday morning with our Philosophy Friday content.
Interested in learning more about summer camps? We've recently written a number of online guides. So whether you want to know how to find a great summer camp, how to find a transformational summer camp, want to know the secret sauce of the best summer camps, or simply want a listing of some of the best summer camps around, we have a guide for you.