Category Archives: Interdisciplinary

Plato or postmodern?

I started reading Rebecca Goldstein’s Incompleteness on Kurt Godel and his theorems—and life. It’s more a “popularization of science” text than anything else, which is not what I wanted. However, one interesting point has already emerged. Assuming she’s right, both … Continue reading

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New Year’s Thoughts

Seemed like an appropriate time for some thoughts from Whitehead on education:   Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge. In education, the broad primrose path. . . is represented by a book or a … Continue reading

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Math and English

One of the vocab quizzes from the previous post talked about how the student preferred math to English because math produced “objective answers.”  When I shared that quiz with some other folks, it produced an interesting exchange. Stanford student:  Good … Continue reading

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“Group work”

This article is worth reading at some point, I think. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2012/07/study_deeper_learning_needs_st_1.html Apart from content- or tech-specific skills, perhaps, I think the biggest challenge in pedagogy at SJS is finding successful ways to encourage the appropriate mix of group and individual … Continue reading

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Theodicy redux

Prompted by a conversation with Joey and Jared and by seeing Jared’s draft notes of his synthesis paper, I decided to write, or at least to sketch out, one of my own.  I haven’t written a long paper since the … Continue reading

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What is an American (part 2)

There are two continents and a land bridge between them that are generally considered “the Americas,” so it understandably annoys a significant portion of the Western Hemisphere when the people of the USA consider and refer to themselves as “Americans.” … Continue reading

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American Literature: 4 Questions

I am probably going to be teaching a section of American Literature next year, which has caused me to ponder what I should teach and why. For years, various people have urged that an American Studies course, wherein American history … Continue reading

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Natural philosophy

I spent about forty minutes today with a fourth grader, whom I was told wanted to talk to someone about some questions he had about philosophy. Or maybe I misunderstood what we were going to be visiting about. But anyway, … Continue reading

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English 2012

A couple of years ago, I had my senior English class spend two days thinking about what “English 2012” should look like at St. John’s.  The idea was to start from scratch (not based on adapting a current course) but … Continue reading

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ISAS 1.5

I woke up this morning thinking about teaching, no doubt the effect of all those talks and conversations with colleagues yesterday.  What I was thinking, though, was that enjoyable (and worthwhile) as they mostly were, none of them addressed (save … Continue reading

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