Coleman’s Nihilistic Pedagogy Morse Peckham’s non-final Answer The Instability of “Meaning” GOP Rep. Dr. Paul Broun (GA) offers an example asserting a “Young Earth” Answer Jim’s goodness as answer to all of this (Huckleberry Finn) *** When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his [...]
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Writing Instruction Grounding Social Control
Those of us who have been teachers and/or wannabe authors before everyone was an author (see the note yesterday re: artists)–I know I’m treading on my commoner sensibility here, always a tension in me–remember there is a book by William Zinsser called On Writing Well. I’ll confess that I own it and yet have never read [...]
Homeschooling, Freely Unequal
Dismantling The Atlantic Monthly Reform Manifesto 2nd Installment I. I introduced the The Atlantic’s Reform pamphlet (“22 pages…”) by focusing on the presentation of content. But, I regret to say I left out what might have been the most important part: the “cover” of the section. It’s a TEST BOOKLET! Surprised? II. Now, this is clearly ideological content [...]
Controlling Signs
Applicable in any century, be it 19th, 20th or 21st (or 21st BCE)–Language controls behavior. *** If Professor Booth goes into his usual coffee shop to get his morning coffee, and says to the waiter, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” and the waiter brings it to him, what has happened? What is the [...]
Talking Testing Aggression
My immodest wish is to pass on to my readers the same sense of intellectual contradiction and incoherence I feel in myself, the acceptance of which is, it may be, our only real excuse for hope. *** To utter a challenge to a group of peers by demanding acceptance in that group, or to challenge [...]
Thou Vain Toy
For Bobby C., underlinings from an essay by Morse Peckham, “Man’s Use of Nature,” offering powder and ball to my NO! in thunder. And, perhaps as expected, Ahab will have the last word. *** An ideology explains the world, and justifies our behavior in it and towards it, and validates that behavior. An ideology tells [...]
The Monkey Rope, Or Our Common Umbilical
We live in a kind of false paradigm of “self-reliance.” I don’t need to blame Waldo for this but perhaps he does bear a good bit of the burden for at the very least his is a kind of Bartlett’s for “individualism.” Living having been usurped by business interests we are inundated with a sermonizing [...]
Power Agent in Repose
The previous post offers a kind of temperamental and philosophical comparison between two our most fecund writers and thinkers. The section out of Emerson is representative of both his power and his risible ambivalence. This is the Emerson that counsels the soul yet succors the she-wolf of mammon and the passing, scornful Days. He is [...]
Put Away Childish Things
I’m sure many of us know at least one line out of the Christian Bible (KJV) and I’m fairly sure it’s this one from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I’d also guess many are not aware it is a biblical apothegm. It’s chapter 13, verse 11: “When I was a child, I spoke as [...]
A Reasoned Resistance
Below we find (in bold) the reason why, as I put forth in “The Plunder Years,” it is necessary to stand against systems serving utilitarian and martial purposes; we find these to be argued in similar terms privileging a quantifiable end defined by a biased conception of “the good.” Systems need good men and women [...]
