A Meditation upon the Meaning and Purpose of Education All civilized people have a great and healthy respect for the Great Books of civilization, those seminal tomes which have helped define who we are, why we are, and where we are. Our culture would be impoverished without them. Indeed, it would be rendered penurious in […]
Category Archives: Better Things Blog
The Epicurean philosophy of Horace’s Odes has something vital to teach those today who are besieged by anxiety and stress. While Epicurean philosophy misses the mark concerning what justice, the good, and freedom are, there is an important kernel of truth that I believe is extremely important for us to consider. Life in our modern […]
What is at stake with Common Core mathematics and why is it so potentially harmful if it is just a minimum standard? In Part I of this series, I addressed commonly held beliefs concerning math education prior to the “reforms” of the early twentieth century that led to the math wars. In this post, I […]
“Math is math. I just don’t understand why my kid needs to know five different ways to solve a simple division problem!” Most parents attempting to help their children with math homework over the past decade have expressed this sentiment. In reply, education experts remind everyone that parents said something similar when “New Math” was […]
In “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel argues that consciousness cannot be explained by contemporary physical science. The inner lives of bats must be so different from our own, not least in their reliance on echolocation over sight. Although scientific methods tell us a great deal about bats, the subjective, inner […]
The traditional approach to reading and spelling instruction began to change about 150 years ago during the Romantic era. Among other things, Romanticism emphasized imagination, creativity, and individuality. The “whole language” or “look-say” method of reading was advocated by Horace Mann, who wrote about phonics: “It is upon this emptiness, blankness, silence and death, that […]
Philosophers ask many questions about many things, including their own discipline. One of the important questions about the discipline of philosophy is this: Is philosophy a reliable means of knowledge? The question whether philosophy can amount to knowledge becomes particularly acute when it is considered in the contrast with the hard sciences. The history of […]