Writings about Education and Life in New England
There it is, the book on my shelf from college: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, by Michael Oakeshott. And there is his name, woven through the work of Andrew Sullivan – an entire PhD. dissertation, in fact, on Oakeshott. There he is, one of the most esteemed conservative thinkers of the 20th Century – [ ]
Not long ago, I was standing in my home workshop, thinking to myself: “I really need to get serious about dust collection,” when it occurred to me how far I have come. If you’d told me two years ago that I’d become interested in woodworking, I wouldn’t even have laughed. I would have imagined that [ ]
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed in the last few years is that some of the most astute and interesting analyses of modern Critical Theory (CT) – whether podcasts, articles, or even books – actually come from the Christian right. I have also noticed that as the culture starts to catch up with CT, [ ]
Years ago, as a student teacher, I was faced with the chore of having teaching high school juniors a book that I absolutely hated as junior: The Scarlet Letter. I had dim memories of slogging through the first third before giving up and faking my way through discussions of the rest of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s antiquated, [ ]
I read many of the Platonic dialogues in college, and I read The Republic several times, but I’d never read Meno, known to be one of Plato’s most influential dialogues on the field of education. After several false starts over the last few years, I finally got around to reading the whole thing. It is, [ ]
“We should, however, give to our children a vision of the possibilities which lie ahead and endeavor to enlist their loyalties and enthusiasms in the realization of the vision.” – George Counts, Dare the School Build a New Social Order? *** As I’ve just finished immersing myself in John Gatto’s powerful arguments for unschooling – [ ]
It’s not unusual that some of the most ardent school reformers are former educators. But it is unusual if they’re arguing not to reform school but to get rid of it. But that’s John Gatto. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as a three-time New York City teacher of the year, and who [ ]
Several years back, in a flurry of activity, I set out to read the fundamental books in the social contract tradition. I read Rousseau, I read Locke, and I read Hobbes. Around the same time, I set a goal of reading John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, and I got as far as purchasing a [ ]
Years ago, when I was first a teacher – which is to say, back before I had time to read books about teaching – a coworker recommended Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I remember having a fairly negative evaluation of the book then – just another piece of Sixties excess, [ ]
Years ago, when we were in high school, a friend of mine read Ayn Rand and started claiming that self-interest was the fundamental motive behind every single human interaction. I remember us having a debate: I would point out an instance of – to me – obvious selflessness (a soldier jumping on a grenade, for [ ]