COLLEGE-BOUND STUDENT ASSESSMENT

November 9, 2015
EDUCATION AND LEARNING
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from Max McGee, Palo Alto, California, school system:

The assessment tool “…needs to look like a portfolio students generate over time that reflects their passion, their purpose in life, their sense of wonder, and that demonstrates their resilience and persistence and some intellectual rigor.” [quoted in TIME magazine]

But can they spell? Write an essay? Do independent research (not always collaborative work)? Can they formulate their beliefs? Can they do a literary analysis?

What would Rousseau say?

What do they really have to know to be admitted to X college or university?

Ask: Fareed Zakaria author of In Defense of a Liberal Education (Norton, 2015)

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READING STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

November 4, 2015
AUTHORS, READING
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by Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961

In 1962, Stranger in a Strange Land won the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel–and became the first science fiction novel to enter The New York Times Book Review‍ ’​s best-seller list.

In 2012, it was included in a Library of Congress exhibition of “Books That Shaped America.”

“I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers … It is an invitation to think – not to believe.”

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”– —Robert Heinlein

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THE TRAGIC VISION

October 25, 2015
LITERARY CRITICISM
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“The universe seems secure only to those who do not question too far.” –Anon.

“What makes mankind tragic is not that [we] are victims of nature, it is that [we] are conscious of it.” –Joseph Conrad

Ideally, tragedy reveals simultaneously, in one complete action [or in a five-act play by Shakespeare] a person’s total possibilities and yet his or her most grievous limitations–all that she or he can do as creator of good, all that he or she does or fails to do, or cannot do, as creature of fate, chance, or that person’s own evil nature.

But is there truly a tragic vision, a consensus definition of “the tragic”?

One common element, a classic common element, seems always to be that there is present a sense of WASTE, or of what could have been.

Saying “That’s so tragic” is that it is not usually tragic, but an expression we have to use–to help us cope (like “She’s in a better place”).

The tragic vision explains what we bring down upon ourselves–that “pride”–that turns to…whatever.

An accident is sad; loss of life is sad; a suicide is sad. But not each event is “tragic.”

We see examples; we don’t need a theory. We just know, and then respond.

“A pox upon this house.”

Is the fault really in our stars?

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THE JOY OF COLLEGE

October 17, 2015
EDUCATION AND LEARNING
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By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in TIME (October 5, 2015, 30-32).

“The joy of college is arguing with others who are equally passionate and informed but disagree. It develops empathy for others and humility in yourself because you will look upon your opponents not as evil idiots but as good people who want the same thing as you: a safe, loving, moral community.

“If you don’t want to read the books [for the course] and develop the skills, don’t take the class. Don’t attend the college. Spend the rest of your life huddled among those who agree with you. But know that that is not thinking–it’s sleeping. Perhaps the Beatles said it best: ‘Please don’t wake me, no, don’t shake me. Leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping.’”

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