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Are Schools Rediscovering the Need for Philosophy Curriculum?0
- Education
- March 11, 2016
Last week we took a look at the curriculum recommendations which Ben Franklin laid out for America’s early grammar schools. These schools consisted of six classes (a.k.a. “grades”) geared toward boys between the ages of 8 and 16 which taught everything from English grammar to classic literature. One of Franklin’s more surprising recommendations was the
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Test How ‘Culturally Literate’ You Are 1
- Culture
- March 11, 2016
E.D. Hirsch, professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, has become famous for his advocacy of “cultural literacy.” According to Hirsch, “To be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world.” He emphasized that a “shared, canonical knowledge is inherently necessary to a literate
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Does the printed word still have power?0
- Culture
- March 11, 2016
Myles Connelly seems to have understood the future when he published Mr. Blue in 1926. In it, he reflects: “No printed word shall wring the new masses as did the printed words in the past. They have not time for the printed word. The day when a pamphlet distributed at a street corner could start
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Wisdom of the East: Saving Europe from Cultural Invasion 0
- Culture
- March 11, 2016
Editor’s Note: The following is an abridged version of Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán’s State of the Nation Address, delivered on February 29, 2016. It is published in translation here by gracious permission of the Hungarian Embassy in Madrid, Spain. Ladies and Gentlemen, The second and third decades of the twenty-first century will be the
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Why Millennials Should Learn to Cook 0
- Culture
- March 10, 2016
Why do so few Millennials know how to cook? I think we are seeing basic cooking skills—knowledge that used to be passed in the kitchen from parent to child—combust before our eyes. It’s been going on for a while and is part of a larger trend toward relying on processed foods that began in the
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‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’… through the Elections 0
- Politics
- March 10, 2016
William Howard Taft was “multi-chinned” and weighted about three-hundred pounds. In 1908 he was elected as the 27th president of the United States. But according to scholar Neil Postman, he would never even make a presidential ticket today due to the nature of television. In his classic Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman writes: “The
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