Tag Archives: Education

A dropout without portfolio

In my last post I got talking about education–my own education—and how this has been something very different from a formal education, and has been a major shaping factor in my life. Nay more: it seems to be my primary … Continue reading

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The one less traveled by

Lately I’ve been thinking about my life, my history, my activities, looking for a common theme. I’ve had so many interests, so many projects–is there any unifying theme behind them all? Yesterday the answer came to me: education. The driving … Continue reading

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making states from scratch

I’m closing in on the end of the Laws of Plato—the current volume in my ongoing reading of the Great Books of the Western World. The Athenian Stranger has been holding forth to his two traveling companions, Cleinias and Megillus, … Continue reading

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Aristotle, meet Paul. . . .

On Thursday, March 7, 2019, I reached a personal milestone: I finished reading the works of Aristotle. I read them mostly from the 2 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World that contain his works: volumes 8 … Continue reading

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Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, volume 1: making the perfect human

Paideia 1: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Archaic Greece: The Mind of Athens by Werner Wilhelm Jaeger My rating: 5 of 5 stars An impassioned, authoritative, and in-depth account of how the character-shaping ideas of education and culture developed in … Continue reading

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The Paideia Proposal by Mortimer J. Adler: learning to be citizens

The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto by Mortimer J. Adler My rating: 5 of 5 stars This short manifesto gives a cogent overview of what public schooling should be setting out to achieve, the rationale for doing so, and how … Continue reading

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hey! teachers! leave them kids alone!

Ideas matter. I suspect that behind every human conflict or disagreement there is an idea—or more than one idea—at stake, and that in most cases the parties concerned are unaware of it. This means that we argue at cross-purposes, never … Continue reading

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my liberal-education report card

In my last post I reviewed the reasons that I think liberal education is so important. Since I’m trying to acquire a liberal education through my own self-study program, a natural question is, what is my own progress? Without a … Continue reading

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why liberal education, again?

Why do I feel that a specifically liberal education is so important? I see it this way. People are different. While we all belong to the same species, we have different backgrounds, characters, interests, and aims. Sometimes these aims come … Continue reading

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On Rhetoric by Aristotle

On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse by Aristotle My rating: 4 of 5 stars Not Aristotle’s clearest or best organized work, but still part of the core curriculum of a liberal education. Why read Aristotle today? Because he is … Continue reading

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