Month: March 2011
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Don’t let kids run the school
It seems we have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at education reform. Here is the new proposal: get rid of teachers and have student devise their own curriculum, collaborate on group projects, and monitor each other’s progress. In short, “let kids run the school.” If the proposal sounds novel and intriguing, well it’s not.…
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On Montaigne’s moment
Could Montaigne be the philosopher for the early 21st C.? When Montaigne wrote in the 1580s, the Wars of Religion were raging all around him in France. The Reformation had already put the “problem of the criterion” center stage: How do we know God, and for that matter how do we know anything? Pyrronian skepticism…
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Reflections on two months of blogging, on page clicks, referrers, searches, and, above all, anonymous readers
A blog seems to me a curious thing. One day you set up shop and natter away. The next nobody looks over your shoulder while you do so. You can write in public, but there’s no public. You urinate in the park without getting caught. Then, for no apparent reason, someone stumbles upon your blog,…
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Why being laid-back may not be a virtue
Being “laid-back” has become something of a buzzword. Roommates are laid-back. So are managers–good ones. And boyfriends–the ones worth holding onto anyway. Apparently, being laid-back is a great virtue. About what topics are those who profess to be laid-back truly laid-back? About another person’s actions or behaviors; about her choices in life; about his values…
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On Richard Rapport’s Nerve Endings
A philosophical review of Richard Rapport, M.D., Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse (New York: Norton, 2005). Richard Rapport’s remarkable book returns us to the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century where amateur science hewed more closely to aesthetic vision. The main characters are the cantankerous Italian, Camillo Golgi, and the pensive, ardent…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 