Around 1990 I was at a public library and saw the headline in the title of this article blaring from Education Week, the newspaper of the NEA. At the time it struck me as a bizarre and extreme idea. Apparently the American educator has decided to adopt it. What has led us to hate the […]
If you’ve read the Republic, you’ve almost certainly been offended by his suggestion that, among the “Guardians,” wives and children should be held in common. Apparently, this was not an entirely unique idea to Plato or his Socrates; the Spartans may have practiced something not altogether different. Now I’m willing to acknowledge that I have
Education is simple…we are the ones who complicate it. It’s as simple as a leader and one being lead. It doesn’t start with an “educational theory” or a “program”. I am under the impression that we may not need a certain philosophy of education to begin with, but rather answer some authentic questions concerning who
I work home alone a lot these days so it is easy to feel that I’m insignificant. I sometimes ask myself, “Does my work matter on a bigger scale?” It is easy for many of us doing work at home or even in small schools to devalue our toil by seeing it as small and
We need to recognize that modern science has two faces: one, the public face of total self-assurance, two, the private face of absolute self-doubt. That may explain the vitriol of this generation of popularizers of Darwin (Dawkins, Hitchins, etc.) They lack the restraint of the old-timers because they lack the assurance of the old-timers. They
