FACULTY‎ > ‎Frederick Hotz‎ > ‎


1a. Teachers promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.

·         Moving between cultural history, our digital present, and the future, I have made the point this year in DC philosophy to demonstrate how Nietzsche and Marx are two philosophers who have analyzed the experiences of thinking and innovation.  Because I anticipate that many of my philosophy students will incorrectly assume that  these philosophers were unable to make a contribution to the progress of our digital present and computerized future I have created a series of PowerPoint lecture that show how philosophic thinking is the experience that goes beyond any historical frame of interpretation.  Marx and Nietzsche present views for understanding philosophy as thinking on  innovation.  

·         Marx was interested in showing how the western world became an increasingly technical society before which Nietzsche decided that we had become objectless objects- human resources.  What is the case for Nietzsche too, but not because our contemporary culture involves itself with a passionate interest in technological development, rather it is because much of what is considered advanced by technology is the absence of the requirement to think critically.  In such a situation, technology can neither be innovative or thoughtful.  

·         In Marx, the laws of capital itself, by the willful use to technology, opens up of the world free market in the 19th century and the first phase of globalization.  Capitalism was the first stage of global innovation that eventually became the global economy. 

·         Nietzsche redefines globalism through “cosmopolitanism,” and considers the progress of technology not in terms of material success but as the time in which some users of technology, (he calls them“last man”) seek to escape from "the burden" of thinking. 

·         My effort in this exercise is to cause my students to reflect on how Marx and Nietzsche are not praising the simple experience of a way of life lost in the face of technology’s threat, but instead warns that if we are to truly remain innovative through the use of technological appliances then we will need to see our relationship to them as an inspiration for thinking that is in every unique aspect innovative - philosophical. 

·         My students keep journals, either electronically or handwritten, to record their thoughts by class notes, reading notes, and summaries.    There are days dedicated to group discussion, Socratic seminars, and presentations where they work collaboratively. 

3d. Teachers model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.

 •             In addition to exploring, designing, and implementing a global studies course, I am investigating the ways in which AP U.S. History courses are taught through a team-teaching method and approach.  Our will department enters into the second phase of our re-design through an American Studies in which no single approach or theme will predominate planned in combination with an account of American literature taught by our English department.  I have used the internet to research different websites of high schools and universities that sponsor such an approach to the study of American history, literature, and approaches for pedagogical availability.