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Category Archives: Education
Atheists Have Affirmative Positions On The Status Of Evidence And On The Standards Of Belief
February 21, 2011 – 7:58 pmIn reply to my defense of what is sometimes called “Evangelical Atheism” on my personal Facebook page, Greg Teed thinks my account comes “so close” to correct but argues that I missed something crucial: All good points, but there is a radical difference *in kind* between what atheists/skeptics promote and what the religious evangelical proselytizes. Sometimes [...]
Kansas vs. Darwin
February 12, 2011 – 10:41 pmFrom today through March 12, you can screen Kansas vs. Darwin. Description of the film: Even before they took place, the 2005 Kansas school board hearings on evolution were recognized as a pivotal battle in America’s ongoing war over teaching evolution in the public schools. Organized by believers in Intelligent Design and convened by creationists, [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Grad Student Rap
January 31, 2011 – 10:48 amSo the music is an abomination, the rhymes are mildly amusing, and the rapping is pathetic, but, you know, out of solidarity with all the grad students out there and in tribute to a decade of my life that is now mercifully over, I just had to post this: The book they’re hawking is Surviving [...]
Just How Much Control Over Their Children’s Thought Are Parents Entitled To?
January 31, 2011 – 10:39 amIn reply to yesterday’s open philosophical question whether a Swedish law banning any school, even private ones, from indoctrinating students by teaching their religious tenets as truths (with the ulterior motive of undermining Islamic schools’ abilities to radicalize their students), Mary Young makes a rigorous and eloquent case against such bans well worth highlighting (and [...]
TOP Q: “Is It Unjust To Outlaw Schools, Even Private Religious Ones, From Teaching Religious Doctrines As Though True?”
January 30, 2011 – 3:57 pmSweden is planning to make it illegal, even for private schools, to teach religious doctrines as true. Their content may be discussed, of course, but they will not be able to be presented as facts. In The Guardian, Andrew Brown explains the issues involved and the ulterior motives which may really explain the legislation: The [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Real Reasons To Go To Grad School?
December 10, 2010 – 6:05 pmHarsh: See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. Your Thoughts?
So You Want To Get A PhD In The Humanities
November 28, 2010 – 4:56 pmDeeply cynical but painfully true: Your Thoughts?
Be Heard, Fellow Adjuncts!
October 2, 2010 – 2:35 pmIf you are a non-tenured/non-tenure track instructor or professor of any sort at any American educational institution, please fill out this survey about your working conditions from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce and be sure to pass it on to any under-employed academics you know, including graduate student teachers on fellowships. (via) Your Thoughts?
Richard Dawkins: “Faith School Menace?”
August 22, 2010 – 2:33 pmJerry Coyne relays this truly eye-opening new documentary from Richard Dawkins which aired in the UK last week: Here’s a link (thanks to Johann Hari) for donating to the cause of abolishing state funding of faith schools in the UK. Your Thoughts?
High School Valedictorian Lambasts The Priorities Of US Educational System
August 7, 2010 – 5:16 pmMeet Erica Goldson, the 2010 valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School: The full transcript of her speech is here. Your Thoughts?
Qualia Soup On Skewed Views Of Science
July 15, 2010 – 8:57 amAn old Qualia Soup video I missed in the past. Thanks to Critical Thinker for the heads up. Your Thoughts?
Changing Minds
June 12, 2010 – 12:52 pmSteven Pinker compares current worries that the internet is changing how we think and making it more superficial to previous “moral panics” at the arrival of all other new media, from the printing press to newspapers to television. (And his examples might as well have gone all the way back to Plato’s mistrust of the [...]
Those Who Can’t Do, Create Knights
June 2, 2010 – 10:28 amNewly knighted, Sir Patrick Stewart explains his debt to a teacher: When asked what had sparked his interest in acting, Sir Patrick replied: ”When I leave here I will be going to a luncheon that has been arranged and sitting on my right will be a man called Cecil Dormand who was my English teacher [...]
Jon Stewart's 2004 Commencement Speech At William And Mary
May 28, 2010 – 12:11 pmListen here to Jon Stewart’s 2004 commencement speech, delivered at his alma mater The College of William and Mary. I heard it several years ago and I’ve thought of it often since. In both his humor and his substance, Dr. Stewart really, really gets it right and gives the graduands the most relevant advice. Click [...]
Daily Hilarity: Grading Rubric
May 22, 2010 – 12:00 amThis is really, really what it’s like to grade: Your Thoughts?
Daily Hilarity: Don't Make Fun of Grad Students
February 22, 2010 – 4:56 pmAnother video about graduate school that hits a little too close to home: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1] Thanks, Dr. Coulter for the heads up! Your Thoughts?
A Statement Of My Teaching Philosophy
November 9, 2009 – 11:50 amI believe that the best teachers are both rigorous and kind. In terms of rigor, my syllabi are usually demanding in terms of the quantity of philosophers and major topics they cover and the quality of readings that they assign. I give comprehensive exams, demand their writing shows signs of philosophical talent for an A, [...]
Simon Blackburn On Philosophy's Contributions
November 6, 2009 – 10:21 pmIn the UK, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills intends to assess “the benefits of postgraduate study for all relevant stakeholders” and “the evidence about the needs of employers for postgraduates.” Philosopher Simon Blackburn answered a request for faculty comments with a letter worth reading in full. A couple highlights: (1) Our postgraduate philosophy [...]
Non-Tenured Faculty’s Freedom Of Speech
October 12, 2009 – 6:45 pmBing posts an interview with AAUP president Cary Nelson about academic freedom concerns of contingent faculty: Being “contingent faculty” myself, I must first say I appreciate at least that Nelson is concerned about us and how we are doing. But I do not think I heard in what he had to say any concrete information [...]
Learning To Love The Bomb (And Other Advice To Live By From Stephen Colbert)
October 6, 2009 – 1:15 pmI identify with Colbert so much in these paragraphs: “The first director I had at Second City said, ‘You have to learn to love the bomb,’ and I didn’t know what he meant for a very long time,” Colbert says. “But there’s something nice about getting to the point where you enjoy the feeling that [...]
Lights, Camera, Ethics!
September 28, 2009 – 11:07 pmThe ethics lectures of Harvard’s Michael J. Sandel are getting high quality video presentation and dissemination: it is the first time that public broadcasters can remember a regular college course’s being presented on television. What’s more, it is also a highly produced multimedia event, with high-definition video, interactive Webcasts, podcasts, a new book and a [...]
Zombie Cockroaches! (And Other Dissertation Haikus)
September 22, 2009 – 12:36 pmWhen you spend years writing away at a dissertation you learn how to do at least one thing exceedingly well—and that’s to describe your dissertation distinctly and succinctly. And sometimes succinctly means boiling it down to just a paragraph or a couple sentences or even one sentence. Or a haiku. Like these people have done: [...]
Are We In The Midst Of A Literacy Revolution Unseen Since The Greeks?
September 21, 2009 – 1:09 pmClive Thompson reports that Stanford’s Andrea Lunsford thinks so: It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school [...]
On The Symbolism Of Book Destruction
September 19, 2009 – 11:34 amOver the past few days we’ve been discussing creationists Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s plan to freely disseminate 50,000 copies of a new version of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species which they are putting out and which contains a deceptive, creationist introduction filled with bad science and false history. RichardDawkins.net and Pharyngula have encouraged people not only to [...]
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