I took a break to get CANEd.

Boston is a lovely town. All the more when the Classical Association of New England is holding its annual conference at UMass Boston. Among my personal highlights from the conference I attended last weekend:

*a talk on the use of graphic novels (in particular, Gaiman's Sandman series) in undergraduate classics curricula.
*meeting up for an evening with a good friend of mine from grad school who now lives in Boston.
*the use of the term "asshood" - seriously and without any verbal scare quotes whatsoever - in a scholarly presentation. (context keyword: Apuleius.)
*the opportunity to purchase a set of Scrabble tiles designed and scored specifically for playing the game in Latin. (Though I admit that I did, in fact, pass up this opportunity.)
*simply connecting with colleagues. Teaching Latin can be an isolating experience, especially in a small school with no one who shares one's area of expertise.
*generally geeking out, speaking Latin and making awful mythological puns (and laughing at them without irony).

Was Einstein Wrong?

An article across which I've just stumbled in Scientific American, co-written by David Z. Albert, the guy who wrote the textbook I used in my Quantum Mechanics and Philosophy seminar as an undergrad. While the common wisdom about QM is that, while not compatible with the world of relativistic effects, at least it leaves the macro-level world alone. This article suggests it might not be so after all...

Thoughts on education and civics, part 2

Here's the next installment of the series I began in my post on March 2. It should be read as a continuation of the same overall essay.


Any analysis of public education automatically starts with a fundamental tension. For although the ideal goals of the liberal tradition rest on education as the betterment of the individual human being, a government brings its own ulterior motives as a condition for providing such education. The ultimate goal of public education must be the cultivation of educated individuals qua citizens, and not qua individuals. But what practical siginificance does this have? Is this distinction not a matter of hair-splitting, after all? Why can't a government provide an education which, in fact, meets the requirements of both a liberal education and, as it were, 'collectivist' civic training? On an individual or case-by-case particular basis, it does seem obvious that liberal and civic education are far from incompatible.

The full answer to the above objection, however, forces us to think beyond the individual case. Civil government is responsible for the education of 'the youth', that is, the sum total (or as near as is practical) of all its citizens' offspring, regardless of social, intellectual, cultural, or any other feature or ability. We are comfortable admitting this; nay more, we celebrate it (and rightly so) as morally right. Less frequently, and less comfortably, do we ask the natural subsequent question: how should civil government appropriately match students' abilities and educational pursuits? As we have already granted, it is in the government's interest to maximize the capacity of its citizenship for informed participation in the vital functions of democracy; and it is surely unrealistic to suppose, given the significant and multifaceted diversity of our society, that a one-size-fits-all educational program would be anywhere near adequate to provide even an approximation of a generally informed electorate. (At least, this last consequence follows readily given our contemporary commitment to the pragmatic significance of diversity. Should this commitment be reconsidered, the conclusions dependent upon it would of course bear similar rethinking.)

Cool yet creepy

Well, folks, resistance really is futile. From Reuters: A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye. Locutus, eat your heart out.

(How) Are Minds (Un)Like Computers?

As I sit and await a scintillating evening at a school budget meeting, I'm doing a bit of surfing (yay wireless!), and have happened across two bits of intellectual flotsam worth perusing...

1. A philosophical and scientifically-informed discussion for the intelligent layperson in The New Atlantis magazine.

2. On a (we hope) unrelated note, a provocative opinion piece from the Standpoint online magazine about the growth of the culture of 'nice' in public education, and the consequences thereof. One of my favorite paragraphs comes near the beginning:

It is also hard to understand one's own time because the realities come encrusted within such a distracting array of circumstance. The Romans lived through the long and peaceful reign of Augustus, barely recognising, until Tiberius and Caligula, how, with the most delicate republican tactfulness in shuffling offices, he had equipped them, if not with a king, certainly with a master. Under Augustus, they had even developed, without quite realising it, some of the sycophancy needed to play the new game of despotism. Even changes of this kind in oneself can be hard to recognise, except in hindsight.

Thoughts on education and civics

What appears below may or may not be the beginning of a series of mini-essays ruminating on the nature of education - in theory, in practice, and in relation to the existence of a civilization. Make of it what you will.

It’s a truism, I think, to say that an individual’s education – his upbringing, background, the axioms of his fundamental beliefs, his knowledge of history (both the history of persons and events and the history of ideas), his awareness of the accidental facts of the world and culture he inhabits – inescapably influences, if not directs, the development of the sort of person he makes himself. A fortiori, education exercises the same degree of influence on the development of the sort of citizen an individual becomes. This very basic, yet fundamental, recognition of the relation between education and citizenship is among the central starting points of the political theory and thought behind the United States as an entity. One of the primary reasons providing public education has been seen historically as a quintessentially appropriate function of the American federal government is that, since the type of education one receives goes far to determine one’s capacity to shoulder one’s responsibilities of civic participation, and since a democracy requires its citizens to maintain such participation, it is not only in a democracy’s best interests to provide education to its citizens, but it is also an obligation.

Thus far, I’ve not stated anything at all new (although it is important that even the most evident truths be periodically revisited and restated in public dialogue, in order to prevent them from being lost by attrition over the generations). However, to say that government is obliged to provide education to its citizens is to make a claim so broad as to be useless. (Compare the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle reminds us that everyone agrees that happiness is the end of the good life – but it is precisely in determining what constitutes happiness where people diverge widely.) Similarly, we must first pose the question: What kind of education is the government obliged to provide? Not only must we pose this question, but we must answer it, and provide an answer which is directly applicable in policy and in practice.

Trying something new...

My intent has always been to make this a bit of a multi-media blog (its nomen is a clue to this effect, as is the early video post), and I'm experimenting, in this post, with having audio. Hope it works...!

Wanna publish?

If you're one of my phi-lunch-ophers, and/or are planning to take my Intro to Philosophy course next spring, AND you think you might like to have your work PUBLISHED, check out the following announcement from the journal Questions:

Questions publishes philosophical work by and for young people,
including stories, essays, poems, photographs and drawings, etc. In
addition, articles related to doing philosophy with young people, reviews of
books and materials useful for doing the same, lesson plans (include description
or transcripts of student responses), classic thought experiments
redefined/modified for modern audience interests and demographics, transcripts
of philosophy discussions, photographs of classroom discussions, and more are
sought.

Images, whether photographs, drawings, paintings, et al. should be sent as
uncompressed TIFF files (with at least 300 dpi resolution). Written submissions
should be sent in Word, WordPerfect, or Rich TextFile formats (as .doc, .wpd, or
.rtf). Scholarly articles should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style
for textual and citation manners; please use endnotes rather than
footnotes.

Be sure to include contact information with your submissions. A
copyright release is needed for publication. All submissions should go to QuestionsJournal@gmail.com.

Submissions for the next issue should be received by March 31, 2009.