A friend told me of young girl in trouble at school. She wouldn’t sit still to do her work, and whenever a teacher’s back was turned she would move about the classroom, sliding, hopping, and turning about. Even when forced to stay at her desk, she would stand rather than sit, tapping or shuffling her […]
Fidgety problem kids — an anecdote Read More »
Amusing. If we substitute the words “Sit, Stay, Do what we say” in the cartoon, then how close are we to much current and traditional education? Other, alternative models of education emphasize choice, movement, and exploration. Related: My eight-lecture Philosophy of Education course covering competing models of education philosophically and historically. Trailer here:
Educating dogs and children Read More »
Wisdom about the challenge of learning from a great genius and then finding one’s own path. Here is Zarathustra: “Now I go alone, my disciples, You too, go now, alone. Thus I want it. Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. The man of
Geniuses and their followers Read More »
Professor Kant first delivered a series of lectures on education in 1776/77. His views were influenced by and are often congruent with those of Johann Georg Sulzer, the leading (and scary) education theorist of the time in the German states. (Here’s an earlier post on Sulzer.) A re-reading of Kant’s On Education highlighted for me
Kant on imagination in education Read More »
Beginning My Studies Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,But stop and loiter all
Walt Whitman on loving learning Read More »
Related: “Mind-shift for 21st-Century Education: Entrepreneurism” by Stephen Hicks.
My Philosophy of Education course on video Read More »
Beethoven, according to biographer Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven: “Wegeler tells us that when a series of lectures on Kant was organized in Vienna in the 1790s, ‘Beethoven didn’t want to attend even once, even under my urging.’ Rather, Beethoven preferred self-education through voracious reading in popularizations of the works of the major thinkers; through rich encounters
How great artists become great Read More »
John Dewey was one of the top two most influential philosophers of education in the twentieth century. Maria Montessori was the other. Dewey’s influence has been most strongly felt in the American public school system. In America, Montessori’s influence has mostly been grassroots and in privately funded schools. Montessori’s approach is highly individualistic and individualized.
John Dewey on education as socialization Read More »