Notes and shorter pieces on culture, education, and the world as it comes.
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A State That Keeps Surprising Itself
Every so often someone rediscovers that Kansas doesn’t behave the way the map says it should, and writes something about it. William Allen White did it in 1896, mocking the Populists in a tossed-off Emporia Gazette editorial that outlived every officeholder it was written about. Thomas Frank did it in 2004, and the title he…
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Soul or Skill
The Mesopotamian scribes who kept the Edubba — the “tablet house” — running four thousand years ago already knew the argument we are still having. The teacher, one student remembered, “guided my hand on the clay, kept me on the right path”: training for a trade, but also, unmistakably, a shaping of the person doing…
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Dangerous Ideas
Mein Kampf is a book that many would be embarrassed to be seen with. In it, Hitler details his hatred of the Jews, his plan to expand the domain of the Germanic peoples at the expense of others, his belief in racial destiny, and other things acted upon in the 1930’s and 40’s. The Social…
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Of Progress
Soon I will be posting views and things I find interesting concerning our culture and how education forms it.