Category: Teaching
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Infinity and Mathematics Education
Time for a re-post. This first appeared in these pages on 18 August 2010. ……………………. A reader writes, Regarding your post about Cantor, Morris Kline, and potentially vs. actually infinite sets: I was a math major in college, so I do know a little about math (unlike philosophy where I'm a rank newbie); on the other hand, I…
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Higher Remediation
My friends in the teaching trenches tell stories that lead me to believe that so-called 'higher education' is now little more than 'higher remediation.'
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On Teaching Philosophy
It is pointless to supply answers to unasked questions or to promote questioning among those who have all the answers.
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How Little They Remember
A man hereabouts with a passion for chess got my number. We've become friends. He told me he took a course in the philosophy of religion way back when. I pressed him on details. All he remembers is the old professor walking into the room, flipping a switch, and intoning "Let there be light!" The…
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A Protreptic Puzzler
A curious passage from Aristotle's Protrepticus: . . . the fact that all men feel at ease in philosophy, wishing to dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of it by leaving behind all other concerns, is in itself weighty evidence that it is a painless pleasure to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly to philosophy. For no…
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Is Suggestibility Always Bad?
Belonging to a community of believers reinforces one in one's belief. If the belief is true and good, then so is the suggestibility that sustains and reinforces it. If we weren't suggestible, we wouldn't be teachable by that highest form of teaching, indirect teaching by example. As the Danish Socrates wrote, The essential sermon is…
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On Indoctrination
Is indoctrination ever a good thing? Presumably, to indoctrinate is to teach one doctrine as if it is true, as opposed to presenting a variety of different doctrines on the same topic without endorsing any one of them. In general, indoctrination ought not be done at the college level: Competing positions should be presented fairly and objectively and students…
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Docendo Discimus
Teaching, we learn. As it stands, a maxim, and true as far as it goes. But in need of qualification which, when added, makes it a maxim no longer. Brevity is essential to the maxim as it is to the aphorism and the epigram. Closer to the truth is the following. Teaching, we learn; but…
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On Relevance in Education
From the mail bag: I have taught high school and college-aged kids for many years, and am very often lobbed the relevance question. The logical coherence of the concept of God. Theories of space and time. Classic questions in epistemology and metaphysics. "How is this relevant," they ask. It annoys me. I make an…
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Nice but Dumb
I can't believe that this old 16 September 2004 post from my first weblog languished there so long before being brought over, today, to my newer digs. …………… My cat Caissa – named after the goddess of Chess – was feeling under the weather recently, so I took her to the vet for some blood…
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The Professor-Student ‘Non-Aggression Pact’
William J. Bennett and David Wilezol, Is College Worth It? (Thomas Nelson 2013), p. 134: Knowing that students prefer to spend more time having fun than studying, professors are more comfortable awarding good grades while requiring a minimum amount of work. In return, students give favorable personal evaluations to professors who desire to be well…
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How Willfully Stupid Can a Willfully Stupid Liberal Be?
There is no limit.
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German Home Schoolers Seek Asylum in USA
Home-schooling is illegal in Germany. So, "In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike left Germany with their five children and came to the United States asking for refugee status as an oppressed minority." So they left Germany to seek asylum in Left-Fascist Amerika. There is a touch of irony here. Well, we are not as far…
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L.A. Schools: No Suspension/Expulsion for Willful Defiance
I said a few entries back that liberals lack common sense. Here is further proof, as if further proof is needed: This week, the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second-largest in the nation—decided to end the practice of suspending or expelling students for "willful defiance," starting this fall. District officials said the practice disproportionately affects…
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Observations on the Joys of Teaching
Teaching is the feeding of people who aren't hungry. Teaching philosophy is the feeding of people who are neither hungry nor know what food is. Teaching is like agitating water in a glass with one's forefinger. As long as the finger is in motion, the water is agitated; but as soon as the finger is…