BY AARON BARLOW When I was young, Civics was a part of the web of education up to the college level. Everyone, after all, was expected to finish high school—and everyone was expected to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the structures of the political system of the United States and the responsibilities of…
There are certain debates in a representative democracy that are eternal for a reason–and that reason often lies the nature of humanity and human vanity. One of these debates, in the United States, was first apparent in the animosity between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. It was recapped a little less than a century ago in Walter Lippmann’s…
Is learning simply the acquisition of information? Is teaching nothing more than the successful transmission of “answers”? Seems so. Seems, also, that those who know next to nothing about education have so hijacked the discussion that we no longer are able to have nuanced discussions about its realities–the needs, methods and goals of systems producing…
Wesleyan University president Michael Roth wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times that appeared yesterday. Titled “Learning as Freedom,” it brings us back to John Dewey and his vision: Education should aim to enhance our capacities, Dewey argued, so that we are not reduced to mere tools. Roth is responding to critics who see…
Republican candidate-presumptive Mitt Romney recently blasted Barack Obama for suggesting that it takes more than an individual to build a country: To say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build…