"... in (Aldous) Huxley's vision (Brave New World), no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."
Amusing Ourselves to Death : Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman
page vii
Very highly recommended!
(And see also Postman's great comments on television.)
John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Federal Law
Quoted here.
Attributed to Goethe
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
page 418
(Or perhaps, "The rabble fears nothing more than intelligence.
But it is stupidity they should fear, if only they understood how fearful it is."
Quoted here)
On Liberty by J.S. Mill
-- I confess that my initial impulse is to agree with this proposition,
though my Liberal scruples immediately repudiate it.
"Universities, even modern universities, are not in the business of maintaining security over information.
On the contrary,universities, as institutions, pre-date the "information economy" by many centuries and are not-for-profit cultural entities,whose reason for existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it.Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization, not just download data into student skulls, and the values of theacademic community are strongly at odds with those of all would-be information empires. Teachers at all levels, from kindergarten up, have proven to be shameless and persistent software and data pirates. Universities do not merely "leakinformation" but vigorously broadcast free thought."
The Digital Underground, from The Cynics, by Tom Price Thomas Huxley Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture "Look to the Children of the Poor in This Season of Budget-Slashing" "Swingin on a Star". Essays on Education by Alfred Whitney (Griswold) The Demon-Haunted World : Science As a Candle in the Dark Epictetus from "Only Adults Can Be Educated",
(The words "artes", "liberales", and "vulgar" are of course Latin, not Greek.) looking pretty funky as of 23 AUG 99 -- many blank pages. -- Hmm, ok ... And how many other mothers and fathers succeeded, I wonder ...
The Hacker Crackdown : Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
by Bruce Sterling
"Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use"
(or here, or here)
conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,
comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations,
analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects." "Autarky or self-sufficiency was the human ideal. It is useful to compare it to the Greek ideal of arete or all-around excellence. Odysseus, for example, exhibited arete: he could build a ship, sail it, command men, flay and roast an ox, shoot a bow, wield a spear, throw a discus, and be moved to tears by a song. He was not a specialist, but a complete man who was equal to any occasion: that is the essence of arete."
"That man (or woman), I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself."
Aphorisms and Reflections, Reflection #89
selected by Henrietta A. Huxley
pub. 1907
Here, here, here
Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce."
by Abbie Hoffman,
Norman Mailer (Introduction), Johanna Lawrenson (Afterword)
page 63
than it does on higher education -- a fair working definition of a dead civilization."
by Molly Ivins
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 24 Dec 1995
included in the book You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You
And be better off than you are
Or would you rather be a mule?
A mule is an animal with long funny ears, He kicks up at anything he hears
His back is brawny and his brain is weak, He's just plain stupid with a stubborn streak
And by the way, if you hate to go to school
You may grow up to be a mule
. . .
And all the monkeys aren't in a zoo, every day you meet quite a few
So you see it's all up to you
You can be better than you are
You could be swinging on a star"
Written by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen
quoted here"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education."
quoted here"An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth -- scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books -- might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism.
We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it.
What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope?"
by Carl Sagan, page 39
Highly recommended!
quoted hereI think I'd have to argue that both for each individual and for society as a whole, a good education (or educational system) is the single most cost-effective investment of resources -- i.e., if we do nothing else to insure the well-being of our children, we should at least do this.
(Also: I am not a Christian, but it seems to me that attending a Jesuit-run school is likely to result in an education conspicuously better than the average.
Update: Spun off a separate page on / The Jesuit Education /)
"Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces"
by Susan Jacoby
Washington Post, 17 FEB 2008"Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. ...
According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important." ...
That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation."
by "Professor X"
Atlantic Monthly / theatlantic.com, JUN 2008"A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.
Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence."
."Would anyone want to go to any other university, if he (sic)could get into this one?
...This school exists for everybody ..."
Max Weismann interviewsMortimer J. Adler
in "Philosophy is Everybody's Business:
Journal of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas", Vol 3, No 1, 1996.
Western canon - Wikipedia
"...a good education is one which frees (from liberal or liberate, tofree) the learner." -- from Marist College"Originally the liberal arts were seven in number. They were divided into the three-fold Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and the four-fold Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. These words mean, respectively, a three-way and a four-way crossroads, implying that these paths of knowledge are fundamentally interconnected -- and, by extension, that all other paths can be found to intersect here, as well."
-- "Socrates was not put to death because of long speeches. He was served that hemlock cocktail because he asked hard questions.""In the 18th century, Masonic lodges served as schools for the imparting of knowledge not only on ethics, religion, and human relations, but also on astronomy, music, arithmetic, architecture and so on. This is apparent through the lectures of William Preston, a London printer, who wrote the Middle Chamber lectures which 200 years later are still used in many Grand Lodge Jurisdictions.
The idea of the liberal arts and sciences dates back to Ancient Greece. The Greeks regarded both science and handicrafts as belonging to the realm of art. The arts were classified as ''liberal," "artes liberales" and "vulgar", "artes vulgares". The "liberal arts" were intellectual arts, versus the "vulgar arts" which required physical or mechanical work. Physical work was thought to be demeaning, thus the idea of "vulgar arts". "
disclaimer"The liberal arts are based on the belief that disciplined learning is the road to freedom in one's personal intellectual life and career. In medieval universities, the seven liberal arts were grammar, logic and rhetoric - known as the trivium - as well as the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. While the modern liberal arts are conceived somewhat differently, they pursue the same tradition of ordered learning to cultivate the mind."
by Gregory Wilbur In 1970, wealthier students were six times more likely tograduate by age 24 as poor ones. But after more than a decade ofgovernment programs aimed at making higher education more affordable, the gap had narrowed significantly. Wealthier students were only four times more likely to receive bachelor's degrees. But then, the trend reversed itself...
Over half of the bachelor's degrees in the U.S. are going to students from the top 25 percent of the family income distribution. That means that less than half of the bachelor's degrees being awarded are going to kids from the bottom three quartiles of family income."
by Scott Bidstrup"How, then, do you solve a law and order problem?
It is my opinion that there is only one solution that is compatible with Jeffersonian democratic ideals that has any hope ofsucceeding. That is a strong committment to a sound educational policy, based on truth and reason, not on politicalpropaganda or religious dogma."
by Norman Brosterman, with Kiyoshi Togashi, Photographer
Can excellence be taught? Inventing Kindergarten presents a persuasive case that the programs developed by Friedrich Froebel prepare the very young to understand intuitively the harmonies between different aspects of experience.
by Leon Botstein
Not the last word on the subject, but worth a look
by Dinesh D'Souza"The commercial invasion of our public schools has reached epidemic proportions. Students are being bombarded, says Mark Crispin Miller, professor of culture and communications at New York University, by six highly destructive messages: "Watch," "Don't Think," "Let Us Fix It," "Eat Now," "You're Ugly," and "Just Say Yes."
I'm fairly sure it's their problem and not mine.
More info here
press release here
Why? A Generation in Trouble
Commentary by Mark Potok, Intelligence Report editor
########## Teaching Tolerance / Responding to Hate at School
########## Intelligence Project / Ten Ways to Fight Hate
by Benjamin R. Barber
page 2
page 3
by Deborah Meier"...fifteen years after analystsdiscovered the great crisis of American education, the American economy is soaring, the productivity of our workforce isprobably tops in the world, and our system of advanced education is the envy of the world."
by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath
by Bruce Sterling
Speech to the Library Information Technology Association, June 1992, San Francisco CA"Can you believe that Melville Dewey once said, 'free as air, free as water, free as knowledge?'
Free as knowledge? Let'sget real, this is the modern world --- air and water no longer come cheap!
Hey, you want breathable air, you better payyour air conditioner's power-bill, pal. Free as water? Man, if you've got sense you buy the bottled variety or pay for anionic filter on your tap. And free as knowledge? Well, we don't know what ``knowledge'' is, but we can get you plenty ofdata, and as soon as we figure out how to download it straight into student skulls we can put all the teachers into thebreadline and the librarians as well."
-- versions of this story are often circulated as "urban legends"; here we may have an instance that we can actually pin down."The commercial invasion of our public schools has reached epidemic proportions. Students are being bombarded, says Mark Crispin Miller, professor of culture and communications at New York University, by six highly destructive messages: "Watch," "Don't Think," "Let Us Fix It," "Eat Now," "You're Ugly," and "Just Say Yes."
Q) Is there any modern Chinese research into the history of Taoism? - Ian Johnson
A) I am not aware of good and serious Chinese research on Taoism. The problem is that:
1) Chinese scholars do not utilize accurate methodology, and their work is therefore not reliable. They begin with a theory and then they look for texts that fit that theory. They frequently cite texts without giving accurate references and without putting them in context, so that they can interpret the texts as they want;
2) Taoism is often considered by good Confucian scholars as "superstition", or minor and heterodox. ...
I wrote some entries for that version (a new Encyclopedia of Taoism currently being prepared), but it seems that the editors did not like my entries because I said things that 'are not traditional" .
( Isabelle Robinet )
Description of the Temples:
Shaolin Temple Life"The Phenomenology (Phenomenology of Spirit by George Hegel) belongs to a quartet of greatest works on the theme of education. The other three members of the quartet are Plato's Republic, Dante's Divine Comedy and Rousseau's Emile."
by Gregory Kane
This article is about at my personal borderline between "justifiable criticism" and "mean-spirited partisanship".
In the spirit of fairness I've played devil's advocate and inserted some editorial comments.
- A page on this site on / Southern Nationalism, Neoconfederacy /"When the Confederate States of Bubbadom (sic, see Confederate States of America) were formed in 1861, educating the populace was clearly not at the top of the agenda. (I don't know whether this is true or not.)
Apparently, not much has changed in the ensuing 140 years. When Confederate flag wavers claim they're proudly celebrating the history of their ancestors by their act, folks ... have to ask: pride in what?
The Confederacy was one of the most backward, repressive and ignorant countries that ever existed. Its most flagrant sin was the perpetuation of chattel slavery, which latter-day Confederate flag-wavers excuse by claiming that most whites in the South didn't own slaves.
They say it with pride, but that's nothing to be proud of. Most whites in the antebellum South were poor, illiterate and uneducated, as were most of the black slaves. (True of most of the population in all countries until recently, and notably of agricultural economies like the antebellum South.) The disparity in wealth was so great that few could own slaves. That made the South not a democracy but an oligarchy. It wasn't a noble experiment in participatory democracy and racial brotherhood, as today's Confederate flag-wavers claim. For the slaves, it was a police state. For free blacks and poor whites, it wasn't much better.
... neo-Confederates will claim that the Confederacy's war against the Union was a heroic defense of states' rights. The states' rights to do what, exactly? (I believe the Libertarian and/or Neo-Confederate answer would be: "To do whatever they thought was right.")
To keep large numbers of its citizens in illiteracy and ignorance, to name just one of those dubious "rights."
The Confederate battle flag is thus a fitting symbol for Mississippi, as well as its sister Southern states, judging by their poor-to-mediocre academic performances."
Literacy education of Blacks was discouraged in the Southern states (See for example the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.) Several states even had formal laws prohibiting it.
As I understand them, the values of Neo-Confederates are almost diametrically opposed to my own.
I'd schematize these values as:
Appreciation of supernaturalism, of hierarchialism, of authoritarianism and conventionalism, of personal and group separatism, of self-indulgence without concern for others (or with only superficial concern that "formal etiquette" be followed), of the acceptablity of violence, of a focus on the past to the detriment of the present and future.
Suspicion of high levels of education and rationalism, of formal societal structures to assist the disadvantaged.
Let's Ditch Dixie by Mark Strauss
13 MAR 2001"The North and South can no longer claim to be one nation. ...
More people live below the poverty line in the old Confederacy than in the Northeast and Midwest combined. You are three times more likely to be murdered in parts of Dixie than anywhere in New England, despite a feverish devotion to "law-and-order" that has made eight Southern states home to 90 percent of all recent U.S. executions. The South has the highest infant-mortality rate and the highest incidences of sexually transmitted diseases, while it lags behind the rest of the country in terms of test scores and opportunities for women. (How is author Strauss defining and measuring "opportunities for women"?) The Confederate states rail against the tyranny of big government, yet they are the largest recipients of federal tax dollars. They steal business away from the North the same way that developing countries worldwide have always attracted foreign direct investment: through low wages and anti-union laws. The flow of guns into America's Northern cities stems largely from Southern states. The tobacco grown by ol' Dixie kills nearly a half-million Americans each year."
###
- A page on this site on / Southern Nationalism, Neoconfederacy /
by Tim Rutten
Los Angeles Times, 22 APR 2001"By the mid-19th century, (Library of America publisher Max) Rudin pointed out, a distinctive American language with a recognizable public voice had emerged. It was a national language shaped not only by nearly universal exposure to the cadences of Shakespeare and the King James Bible, but also by its dissemination through increasingly sophisticated mass media -- newspapers, weekly magazines and journals. Through such media, fluent spokesmen of the emerging national language--Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, for example -- exerted a powerful and widely imitated influence."
The Times 24 JUL 2001 "Where else but modern Britain would “elite” have become a dirty word? It means simply the best. Would you criticise Sampras and Agassi for being élite tennis players?
Admittedly, there is a bad form of élitism, meaning the exclusion, by the present élite, of those wishing to join. My purpose is the opposite. I am so élitist, I want the élite to grow. That means not talking down to the degraded level of Sun readers and Big Brother gossipers, but instead striving, using rhetoric if necessary, to show something better. Science is fascinating by its very nature and its appeal needs no contrived broadening. Let’s hear it for élitism, and let’s all try to join the élite.""In schools and universities information of all sorts is ladled out, but no one is taught to reason, or to consider what is evidence for what."
"(Sir Isaac) Newton singlehandedly contributed more to the development of science than any other individual in history. He surpassed all the gains brought about by the great scientific minds of antiquity, producing a scheme of the universe which was moreconsistent, elegant, and intuitive than any proposed before."