Category: education
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On spiritual exercise
1 One of my fondest childhood memories is of my father playing catch with me. In my mind’s eye, I can see him showing me how to rotate my glove through a sundial of positions. A basket catch won’t always do. You don’t stab at the ball with pinchers; you let it in. A good…
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On moral guidance, moral expertise, and philosophical counseling
As a philosophical counselor and moral philosopher, I believe our culture is conceptually muddled about the idea and prospect of self-improvement. On the one hand, we all hunger to be better, more fulfilled, happier persons. The self-help industry feeds this hunger without making us full. (The “Chinese food take-out” problem as Jay Bernstein once put…
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What should schools look like in the 21st C.?
What does it mean to educate young persons? 1. It means to equip them with the technical and procedural skills they need in order to maximize their rational self-interest in the increasingly global marketplace. (Technical skills–Vocation–Market Society ethos) 2. It means to open up spaces and provide them with opportunities for realizing their capacity as…
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Agonising, agonism, and nuclear power
Bridget McKenzie @ New Public Thinking discusses with finesse and honesty the nuclear problem in the context of climate change. Here is my comment. — Dear Bridget, There is a lovely line in the late philosopher Robert Nozick’s book The Examined Life about taking a position. Nozick confesses that when he was younger he believed,…
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Alternative educational models: A philosophical overview
Philosophical Questions Q: What is human nature? A: Human nature is thinking-crafting. Q: What is community? A: Community is self-governance aimed at the common good (an anarchist principle with a republican final end) Q: What is education? A: Education is the cultivation of our thinking-crafting natures realized in self-governance and striving toward the common good.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 