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A Poignant Quote from Will Durant 0
- Culture
- February 11, 2016
Strangely enough, the odd malaise and pessimism that occupies our times isn’t unique to this decade. It has been building for some time now as we of the West have moved further from our roots and the natural order of things. Check out this excerpt from Will Durant’s On the Meaning of Life from 1932: “This
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C.S. Lewis on “The Essential Evil” of Schools 1
- Education
- February 11, 2016
Author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) attended school in England between the ages of 9 and 15. During that time, Lewis was for the most part blessed with good teachers. Yet, in reflecting back on his experience, Lewis describes in his autobiography what he also came to see as “the essential evil of public-school life.” (“Public school”
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File This Under ‘Things You Would Never See in America’0
- February 11, 2016
At Intellectual Takeout, we often wish that people would be more passionate about ideas. But this might be taking it a bit too far… In 2014, the Independent reported that a teacher in Russia killed his friend over a dispute about… wait for it… the merits of poetry versus prose. “A Russian teacher allegedly killed
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In Defense of Memorizing 1
- February 11, 2016
If you ever read the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace as a kid, you probably know that Betsy and her friends were big fans of producing home-grown entertainment programs. And the entertainment perpetually ran along the same lines: Betsy and Tacy performed the Cat Duet, little Tib did the Baby Dance, talented Julia played
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Cohabitation is Socially Acceptable, But is it Socially Beneficial?0
- Culture
- February 11, 2016
In case you hadn’t noticed, acceptance of cohabitation has seen a rapid increase in recent years. According to NPR, “more than 65 percent of first marriages start out” in cohabitation, and “young adults born after 1980 are more likely to cohabit than any previous generation was at the same stage of life.” But while cohabitation
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T.S. Eliot on Early Childhood Education 0
- Culture
- February 11, 2016
In the face of abysmal reading, writing, and math proficiency by elementary students, many Americans these days are pushing for universal early childhood education. It’s an odd position we’re in when our education system has expanded itself so incredibly over the 20th century by arguing that it indeed can take kids from all manner of backgrounds
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A Poignant Quote from Will Durant 0