Daedalus articles from June 2002

Daedalus archives from June 2002

Education after the culture wars.
June 22, 2002... Suppose most of our nation's schools, through some unknown mechanism, decided to stop teaching history and literature. Suppose our educators went along with this practice because it was so widely accepted, and so far advanced, that no one...

Contemporary consciousness & the study of the humanities.
June 22, 2002... Since people began to reflect about such matters, the nature and quality of education has been of concern; probably every generation in every land feels that its educational problems and prospects are special. That said, there is little...

A better way.
June 22, 2002... While it was unlikely to have been her intention, Diane Ravitch's lively essay provides us with a powerful argument against centralized state and national control of the schools' curriculum. A neat, "rigorous," and uniform American...

Not to worry?(analysis of education and educational materials )
June 22, 2002... All strength--all terror, single or in bands, That ever was put forth in personal form-- Jehovah--with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones-- I pass them unalarmed. --Wordsworth Equipped with an...

An intractable debate.(analysis of Diane Ravitch's critique of education )
June 22, 2002... Education invariably provokes controversy. The philosophical implications of education, together with its complex impact on society, prevent any easy agreement about how we should appraise current practices. Just consider that each baby is a...

The culture wars continue.
June 22, 2002... The culture wars that began in the 1960s in the United States have been fought over four great, linked issues: the nature of the United States and its role in the world; race and racial discrimination; gender and gender discrimination; and...

A view from the schoolhouse.(Elementary education)
June 22, 2002... Elementary education has become... a sort of vaudeville show. The child must be kept amused and learns what he pleases. Many teachers scorn the old-fashioned rudiments; and it seems to be regarded as a misfortune to read and spell....

Class notes.(revising of educational standards)
June 22, 2002... In the spring of 1958, my high school principal, Rufus Tonelson, assigned me, a twenty-two-year-old teacher with a master's degree and one year of prior teaching experience, five sophomore English classes: the top one, three middle ones, and...

The decline of civic education.
June 22, 2002... Many years ago, Lawrence Cremin noted that often, when dealing with controversial issues, educators followed the principle of "when in doubt, leave it out." (1) Diane Ravitch's account of current textbook publishers, testing companies, and...

Why a common curriculum?(Diane Ravitch's alalysis of curriculum and common culture)
June 22, 2002... At the close of her stirring paper, Diane Ravitch asserts that "we must reclaim our common culture... or risk seeing it disappear." What precisely that common culture is, and what makes it seem to Ravitch so essential, she never precisely...

Reforming the disciplines.(school and curriculum through Diane Ravitch's essay)
June 22, 2002... Much is wrong with our schools. The title of Diane Ravitch's essay may imply that the predicament of K-12 education is the legacy of the "culture wars," but her essay shows the problem to be both different and larger. The content of the K-12...

It all comes down to the teachers.
June 22, 2002... Diane Ravitch takes us on a discouraging tour of the "Empire of Boredom"--an imaginary world created and ruled by censors and marketeers, where young people conquer all obstacles and old people are as vigorous and cheery as the cover models in...

On Gramsci.(Antonio Gramsci)
June 22, 2002... Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891 and died in Rome in 1937. Frail from birth--he was less than five feet tall--he suffered from poor health throughout much of his life. Awarded a scholarship to attend the University of Turin, he...

From the 'prison notebooks'.(educational systems)
June 22, 2002... [section]1....One may say, in general, that in modern civilization all practical activities have become so complex and the sciences (1) so intertwined with life that each practical activity tends to create a school for its own administrators...

Education for all: an unfinished revolution.
June 22, 2002... We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build the youth for our future. --Franklin D. Roosevelt Societies throughout history have acknowledged the importance of education to human progress. From ancient...

Death of Magellan.(Poem)
June 22, 2002... We're struck by the sun when it's gone; the sure foot pauses. Heaven was lost when up and down lost meaning. Valor was lost when all that mattered was seeking elixir within. The nearest star is who we were...

Petrified forest.(Short Story)
June 22, 2002... Alvin bought the dinosaurs in a fit of mall-bound depression. He had a gig playing acoustic in a record superstore, six to eight. Tuesday through Thursday, finger-picking blues miked and piped through the house PA. A novelty.... It paid a...

On the crisis in Catholicism.
June 22, 2002... In the winter of 2002, a few short months after the trauma of September 11, the Roman Catholic Church was hit by a tidal wave of revelations. While qualitatively different from the September catastrophe, it has been, for Catholics, a comparable...

On the return of the 'civilizing project'.(cultural relativism)
June 22, 2002... The ranking of cultures, civilizations, and religions from better to worse may have gone out of fashion among academic anthropologists long ago, but such thinking is back, with a vengeance, and in some pretty fancy places. An "evolutionary" or...

On science at a crossroads.
June 22, 2002... You might suppose that editing a scientific journal is easy work, and in the old days it may have been. After all, the authors all want very much to publish, and they don't have to be paid. The editor does have to keep peace between authors and...

On welfare & the psychology of dependence.
June 22, 2002... Dependence is a deep, and deeply unsettling, social relationship. Those who must ask others for help risk losing face, and respect, especially in the eyes of strangers. Yet our intimate experience tells another story. Imagine a lover who...