Unexpected Philosophers

When you think of successful university careers, you might think of presidents, provosts and deans; when you think of the wisdom to be found on campus, you’re likely to think of professors sharing the fruits of their decades of research on chemistry, classics, or quantum mechanics, writes Serena Golden for Inside Higher Ed. You almost certainly won’t think of the folks cleaning the bathrooms, washing the floors, and changing the trash bags. Might you be missing something?
Patrick Shen thought so. While working on a previous film, Shen - who works at Transcendental Media, the independent film company he founded, as a director and producer of documentaries - interviewed Sheldon Solomon, a professor of psychology at Skidmore College. During one conversation, Solomon remarked - Shen told Inside Higher Ed - "that he is often mistaken for a homeless person because of the way he dresses and wears his hair long. That got me thinking about what wisdom we might find from the people on the fringes of society." So, along with his co-producer, Greg Bennick, Shen set out to make a film about the wisdom of people whom we rarely think of as wise. The two called colleges and universities across the United States to ask if they could interview the janitors.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site
Source: University World News, Issue No: 0091 06 September 2009