Education

And literacy. From qz: Nine- and 10-year-old children in England who participated in a philosophy class once a week over the course of a year significantly boosted their math and literacy skills, with disadvantaged students showing the most significant gains, according to a large and well-designed study (pdf). More than 3,000 kids in 48 schools across England participated in weekly discussions about concepts such as truth, justice, friendship, and knowledge, with time carved out for silent reflection, question making, question airing, and building on one another’s thoughts and ideas. More. Unlike many edu-advocacy findings, this one makes sense. Philosophy teaches us to think in a systematic way. It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t help with math and literacy. But Read More ›

Denyse’s recent post here on falsifiability tells me that we need more thought on this creature we call science and what it means for all of us, and especially the enterprise of knowledge.
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Recently, Evolution News & Views has been discussing the decade-old Dover case that, in my view, cleared the decks for serious discussions about Darwinism. No surprise, lots more people express doubts, now that the failing American school system is no longer  an issue. West, a director at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (ID Central), writes, It was during the bleak months following Dover that I made one of the biggest decisions of my professional life. Rather than cut and run, I decided to risk everything. Convinced of the critical importance of the intelligent design debate, I gave up my tenured position as a university professor to devote my full energies to Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Read More ›

The core challenge being addressed (as we respond to abuse of a critical thinking curriculum)  is the notion that belief in the reality of God is a culturally induced, poorly grounded commonplace notion. An easily dismissed cultural myth or prejudice, in short. Let us remind ourselves of the curriculum content used by teachers in a district in Texas until protest led to removal of the focal question: Having: shown that such belief is deeply rooted in key, serious thought (also note vids 1: Kreeft, 2: Zacharias, 3: Craig, also 4: Stroebel on Jesus), (exposing the flying spaghetti monster parody as strawman fallacy) and noting (cf here in op and here as a comment)  how it underpins the moral fabric of Read More ›

As we continue to respond to the abuse of curriculum authority that tried to present to 12 year olds in Texas that belief in God is in effect a culturally stamped but ill supported notion, it is appropriate to pause and watch how William Lane Craig responds to the sort of arguments presented by Dawkins et al as a refutation of arguments to God. Arguments that any number of triumphalistic YouTube videos announce as “destroying” arguments in support of theism: [youtube u14dtDuEf3E] Further food for thought, and of course strictly verboten in today’s radically secularised public school classroom. END PS: It is worth the further pause to look at Plantinga’s collection of two dozen or so theistic arguments.

As we continue to address the abuse of curriculum authority that tried to present to 12 year olds in Texas that belief in God is in effect a culturally stamped but ill supported notion, it is appropriate to pause and watch Kreeft’s video lecture: [youtube gyrzhVvg3ws] Food for thought. END

As just noted, a discussion thread on responding to abuse of the privilege of developing and implementing curriculum has been trollishly hijacked in what looks like an escalation of the tactics coming from a circle of objector sites. At the end, on a topic dealing with 12 year olds, sexually tinged vulgarity has been injected by word plays on a participant’s handle in an attempt to trigger a spiral to the gutter. That is the sort of ruthless nihilistic amorality and domineering disrespect we have been seeing in answer to exposure and correction of patent education abuse — of 12 year olds in Critical Thinking class . . . as in: pretending and trying to enforce under colour of education Read More ›

Yesterday, I highlighted a case in Texas in which a School-level Critical Thinking Curriculum has been manipulated to set an assignment (in a section for 20 points) gives a question requiring the answer that “There is a God” is not fact or credible view but a cultural commonplace, poorly supported and dubious assertion that apparently students felt was effectively equivalent to “myth.” Documents: Today, we need to begin to address this attempt to discredit ethical theism under colours of education. At first level, ethical theism is foundational to the charter of modern Constitutional Democracy, the US Declaration of Independence, 1776. Something that can and should be memorised by school students (and which it would be difficult indeed for educators or Read More ›

Here (make sure to watch the embedded Fox26 video which I doubt I can embed at UD). Is it reasonable to be putting such a question to 12 year old students in class? (And if you think this was just one teacher, note how it came up the next day in other classes and in multiple classes on the day in question; somebody with responsibility wrote this into a curriculum with intent to create the view that per critical thinking, belief in God is little more than a widely believed, religiously backed [itself a loaded issue] questionable opinion with little warrant.) Is the view that God is real merely a religious belief with no serious weight of evidence or argument? Read More ›

From Dr. Everett Piper, President, Oklahoma Wesleyan University: This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable. I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a Read More ›

Over at The Best Schools, James Barham introduces an updated preface by Pierre van den Berghe, author of an older classsic on the ways academic life subverts honest enquiry: 1. Perhaps the most glaring change facing job-seeking PhD holders is a sharp deterioration in career opportunities and employment conditions. A glut of PhDs in many fields produced a shift from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. When AG appeared in 1970, US academia was approaching the end of its enormous expansion, becoming the juggernaut of world higher education. PhD production continued unabated, but job numbers stagnated or even contracted. Colleges and universities began to restrict tenure-track positions, and created a rapidly growing, semi-nomadic proletariat of instructors and lecturers on one-year, Read More ›

Says Smithsonian mag: Most higher education institutions offer a wide range of topics, from engineering and science to literature, history and sociology have long been a backbone of . But, as Alex Dean reports for The Guardian, that is changing in Japan as over 50 universities reduce or eliminate their humanities and social sciences departments entirely. The education minister wants to convert them “to serve areas that better meet society’s needs,” such as training for jobs. It’s a move that’s sending “shivers down academic spines” worldwide. Historian Erin Blakemore notes that the move has “horrified some academics,” including some in the sciences. More. It would be interesting to know if all the recent scandals in social sciences have played a Read More ›

Megan Fox at PJMedia writes, Anyone who questions the great religion of Darwinism, specifically that all living things come from one common ancestor and more specifically, that people evolved from apes, is violently and quickly attacked, silenced, and treated like they’re a heretic. … I have personally been threatened by people who say they want to call the state and report me for child abuse because I made a video questioning the validity of some of the evolutionists’ claims at the Field Museum in Chicago. These threats are not to be taken lightly, considering that children have been taken from their parents over idiotic circumstances like a homeschooling father who takes a natural supplement that the FDA doesn’t approve of Read More ›

Justice, classically, is often portrayed as a blindfolded lady carrying scales and a sword. This represents the challenge of impartiality and responsible and fair evaluation of cases in light of facts, rights, value and values that must consistently lie behind the unfortunate reality that the state and its officers must wield the sword in defence of the civil peace of justice. Otherwise, the state descends into incompetence or even the dark night of tyranny and its consequences: injustice, undermining of rights (especially for the weak) and loss of legitimacy that justifies a demand for reformation. Thus, justice is inevitably a moral issue and therefore inevitably raises the question of the status of OUGHT in light of the IS-OUGHT gap. Thence Read More ›

In a current UD News thread, we see how Megan Fox at PJ Media reports: >>If you want to know why people dislike atheists, it’s because they’re thoroughly dislikeable. And if you should find yourself on the wrong side of atheists, like I did by simply posting a video [–> perhaps, this] of myself walking through the Field Museum in Chicago asking questions about evolution — a topic many still view as controversial — be prepared to have to go to the police and file reports of harassment and cyberstalking. You are not allowed to question the gods of the atheists, namely Darwin and the scientists who bow at the altar of Darwin. If you do, you’ll face nothing but insults, Read More ›