As a professor of Russian literature, I’ve come to realize that it’s never a good sign when real life resembles a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, with its riotous rhetoric and steady stream of scandals, calls to mind Dostoevsky’s most political novel, “Demons,” written in 1872. In it, the writer wanted to warn
READ MOREOver at Ted.com, we learn that as a planet we spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games. The article further reports that: “The average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21 — or 24 hours less than they spend in a classroom for all of middle and
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READ MOREWith another school year about to start, here’s a bit of advice from a recently retired college history teacher. Beware of teachers whose opening day gambit assures all new students that they have little or nothing to worry about on the following front: none of that dreaded memory work will be asked for, much less
READ MORELate last week, The Washington Post highlighted a bit of a rant titled “What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning,” by author Carol Black. In essence, Black’s article takes issue with the modern education system’s insistence that every child fit into its timetable of learning. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than
READ MOREOn August 22nd, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, better known as Welfare Reform. Shortly before signing the Act, President Clinton noted that the old welfare system: “[I]nstills the wrong values [and] sends the wrong signals, giving children who have children a check to set up house on their
READ MOREVeteran journalist Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Post over the weekend, said a tragedy is unfolding before our eyes. Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of
READ MOREIn a previous article for Intellectual Takeout, I commented on G. K. Chesterton’s complaint that the modern world’s perception of the so-called “Cave Man” was based on a supercilious prejudice, or what might be called a chronological snobbery, which was akin to racism. The stereotype that we’ve created for our Neolithic ancestor is of a
READ MOREAs my boss is prone to remind me, you can’t enjoy the fruit by cutting down the tree. Yet, that is exactly what many today hope to do when it comes to Western civilization: they want a world permeated with Western values such as freedom, justice, and equality that no longer preserves a knowledge of
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