Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Dan Rothstein believes we need to learn to question more effectively. It's a skill that should be considered as important as literacy or numeracy. “It’s essential to democracy. You want citizens to be able to ask good questions"
Junod bullied another child and it scarred both of them. So when Romney says he doesn't remember, he's lying. Neither victim nor perpetrator forget things like that. But suppose he is telling the truth. What does that make him?
Saudi school textbooks became a subject of international interest after 9/11. The education ministry promised reform. But schoolchildren are still instructed not to greet infidels and to beware the West's threat to Islam
If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for old elites, Stanford is the farm system for Silicon Valley. But with many students there developing a gold-rush mentality, is it striking the right balance between commerce and learning?
Learning requires effort. And that is how it should be. So it's dismal to see "the traditional set texts chopped up into boneless nuggets of McKnowledge, and students encouraged to do their research – such as it is – on the web"
The year is 1973, the location North Dakota. The head of a school board decides that Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, is not only inappropriate reading material for students but must be burned. Vonnegut responds with a letter
The old are eating the young. They may not have set out to do so, but economic and social policy has been rigged to serve their interests. It's unaffordable socialism for the old; virulently purified capitalism for the young
Report from 2012 Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia. Expecting to find the equivalent of a candlelit vigil, Crispin is stunned to find little evidence of an industry in peril. Mood instead is one of calm, optimism
Writer tries out online learning course from Stanford professors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. "Fifty years from now, according to Thrun, there will be only 10 institutions in the whole world that deliver higher education"
There are clear practical reasons for digitising encyclopedias. But "with the disappearance of paper encyclopedias, a part of the Western intellectual tradition is disappearing as well" – the ambition to distill all human knowledge
Exhibition dedicated to Muslim pilgrimage is put on with Saudi help. Scholarly questions are ignored in order to accommodate Saudi and Muslim sensitivities. Is this a price worth paying, if there's a wider societal benefit?
"Athens, with its brilliant intellectual and cultural achievements, enjoyed a free market in education. Sparta, an intellectual and cultural wasteland, was dominated by a system of state education." One which was to influence many
Imge by DarkElfPhoto on Flickr
"Give us a world where half our institutions are run by women"
Clark Kerr, on what good universities provide
"Sex for the students, sports for the alumni, parking for the faculty"
