From a lecture titled “Solitude and Leadership,” which William Deresiewicz delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009: Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality. Hereâs the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself…
Category: Education
Literature makes you weird. Its gift is the uncanny.
In a previous Teeming Brain post (one that has received a steady inflow of visitors ever since I first published it in 2009), I talked about the magical/alchemical power of language in general and poetic language in particular: [T]here’s a positively magical power in language, particularly in the poetic use of it, since language enables…
Alan Watts on choosing your life’s work: Forget the money, follow your deep desire
What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like? … [When counseling graduating students who ask for career advice,] I always ask the question, “What would you do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?” … If you say that getting the…
Resist Dystopia: Learn to Enjoy Reading Shakespeare
At the conclusion of Technopoly, Neil Postman lays out his concept of the “loving resistance fighter,” someone who keeps an open heart and a strong hold on the symbols and narratives of liberty, honor, intelligence, etc., that made America (and, by extension, other modern democracies) great, while deliberately resisting the coarsening, dumbing, soul-killing influence of…
Technology and schools: Update on a techno-utopian delusion
Throughout the 1990s the Clinton administration pushed hard for the universal integration of computers and information technology throughout America’s public education system, culminating in Bill Clinton’s official presidential call for “A computer in every classroom,” since, in his words, technology is “the great equalizer” for schools. No matter that it was an idea (and ideology)…
Beware the American craze for college credentialing
The editors of the always-valuable n+1 have published a penetrating and damning assessment of what’s wrong with the craze for credentials that marks the American economic and educational landscape right now. It’s all the more valuable for putting the whole thing in long-historical perspective. For the contemporary bachelor or master or doctor of this or that,…
‘The Twilight Zone’ for teachers: ‘Changing of the Guard’
In 1962 The Twilight Zone ran an episode titled “The Changing of the Guard.” It starred Donald Pleasence (in his first American television appearance) as an elderly literature professor who is forced into retirement and decides to kill himself on Christmas Eve when he’s overcome by the sense that his entire life and career have…
Education research exposes the theory of multiple intelligences as singularly stupid
Oh, the delicious irony. Or rather the sweet savor of vindication. When I went through the Missouri teacher certification program from 2000 to 2001, the famous “theory of multiple intelligences” was all the rage. It was one of the philosophical and practical touchstones for training new teachers how to achieve maximum success in educating their…
Rhode Island School of Design now requiring incoming freshmen to read H.P. Lovecraft
Is it really possible that a modern-day American college has actively taken steps to transform the experience and education they offer their students into an overtly Lovecraftian affair? Why, yes, it is, much to my jaw-dropped astonishment and delight. Cue the sound of stars aligning. First, the wide-scope background: As reported by The New York…
From Google’s “in-house philosopher,” a beautiful credo in defense of studying the humanities
Here at The Teeming Brain I’ve gone on at some length about the disastrous/dystopian trends in contemporary American education, including, especially, the rise of the techno-corporate consumer model that assigns a purely economic raison d’etre to higher education. (See, for example, my “America’s Colleges at a Crossroads” series and additional articles.) Today I’m fascinated, and…