For Lovecraft fanatics like me, a piece that appears in the current issue of The Onion (March 2, 2009, Issue 45:10) is surely the most hilarious bit of writing to come down the pipeline in years. Its title is “Lovecraftian School Board Member Wants Madness Added to the Curriculum.” For obvious (copyright-related) reasons, I can’t…
Category: Education
Virtually invincible ignorance in America’s public schools
From time to time I check out the latest activity at Education Conversation, a blog by Tammy Brennan about the problems in America’s current state-run education system. Today I stopped by and found a post from February 17 titled “The End of Literacy” that describes a situation and an experience that I have personally encountered…
Letter to a student: Philosophy for fun and self-deprogramming
Yesterday I received an email from one of my former high school students. He asked me a few questions that indicated he has really entered into a reflective state of mind: Am I familiar with C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity? What do people mean when they refer to other people, situations, or anything else as…
What kind of teacher should I be?
For most of this week I’ll be tied up with professional development training at my job. To tide over my high school classes during the interim (and to help prevent a nervous breakdown on the part of the substitute teacher), I came up with an assignment that should take awhile for my students to complete….
School Meets the Matrix
Not much original content to post today. As the school year enters its terminal phase, I’m engulfed in that ominous fourth-quarter weariness that translates into a creeping internal silence. It’s a great time to listen to Current93 and read Ligotti, Cioran, Amiel, Lovecraft, Robert Frost, and other prophets of the void. It’s also a great…
Education vs. student anti-intellectualism
My recent post about Anna Nicole Smith continues to draw lots of traffic. A couple of days ago it finally drew what I had been expecting: a criticism. A commenter to my blog chose to remain anonymous and wrote in place of a user name, “You’re a pitiful teacher.” Then he/she left a very critical…
High tide for anti-intellectualism
This post is in response to a query somebody made at the Shocklines forum. In various conversations at that board, people have recently been mentioning a supposed surge of anti-intellectualism in America today. One person responded with the following: I’ve been hearing a lot about this ‘wave of anti-intellectualism’. I’m curious about it. All artistic…