Everyone who learns a little bit about educational history in the U.S. learns about John Dewey. His published ideas, which would seem commonplace and hardly revolutionary today, caused a change in the system of education throughout American public schools which seemed at the time quite momentous. Ordinary people noticed it and referred to “the new schools.” I get these things from reading old books. A few points about all this before moving on. We are still living with Dewey. I dare say that my own essay, below, will be accidentally… Read more Some Principles of Education for People Who Don’t Want Education to Drain their Children Dry →
If I allow my mind to flit back to the days of my youth in search of a representative scene or day, I usually come up with a composite picture that racks me with nostalgic longing. Me, huddled by a window or on a porch swing, reading a classic novel and listening to classical music. The swing swims in a weightless atmosphere of gold and green – sunlight filtering through leaves that toss like confetti, dappling the grasses and dandelions. Every breeze, sight, sound, and smell affirm what I am hearing… Read more Listening to the Better Parts of our World →
Even though my own education was self-directed and patchy, I do have very pretty ideas about how people learn to write. I am presently taking a distance writing class and I had a course or two at college. What I find is that those kinds of sources have a limited but very important function. Their limitation is that they will give you fairly generalized instruction, but the benefit is that someone is going to see what you write and point out exactly where you deviate from that instruction. (Hopefully you gain the ability to… Read more How We Learn How To Write →
Slow Literature 