Everyone, and by all means everyone at all connected with public education including our President and his new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, ought to read this short statement by Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gardner reminds us forcefully and correctly that “Group Comparisons Don’t Help,” [...]
Archive for April 2009
Howard Gardner: Group Comparisons Don’t Help
April 29, 2009Tampa Paris Twittering
April 28, 2009—–Message d’origine—– De : Philip Waring à Tampa Envoyé : samedi 18 avril 2009 16:06 À : Eric Degardin à Paris Objet : Twitter? Eric, Twittering does seem like a good way to keep in touch. Do you twitter? I know you do FaceBook, where that question, “What are you doing now?” (or is it what’s on our mind? [...]
Pakistan, failed nuclear non-state
April 25, 2009Pakistan is an enigma for us in the West. We don’t understand what is going on, in particular we don’t understand it when the new president, Asif Ali Zardari (and the husband of Benazir Bhutto, extremist assassinated twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan) has absolutely nothing to say, at least to us in the West, [...]
The way things are, or the way we would have them be
April 22, 2009The argument is, and perhaps is always, between those who would see things as they are (and perhaps as we all would rather they not be) and those who would go on seeing things as they (probably most of us) would like them to be. I take an example of each position from today’s newspapers, [...]
Forgiveness and Irony
April 20, 2009The thinker and writer Roger Scruton says, in a winter 2009 City Journal article, that if we want a simple definition of the West as it is today, the concept of citizenship is a good starting point, but it’s only a starting point. It’s not enough. John Locke’s social contract, bringing about responsible cooperation between [...]
George Will, Potemkin Country
April 19, 2009Washington Post, Sunday, April 19, 2009 WASHINGTON — America’s “progressive” president has some peculiarly retro policies. Domestically, his reactionary liberalism is exemplified by his policy of No Auto Company Left Behind, with its intimated hope that depopulated Detroit, where cattle could graze, can somehow return to something like the 1950s. Abroad, he seems to yearn [...]
From Lewis H. Lapham in Harper’s Magazine, May, 2009
April 19, 2009Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay good night and quickly turn away. —W. B. Yeats Jean Baudrillard, writing in his last book, Cool Memories V, after having been diagnosed with [...]
The Pirates Challenge Obama’s Pre-9/11 Mentality, Distinctions between lawful and unlawful combatants go back to Roman times.
April 11, 2009The excerpt below is taken from an op ed piece in the WSJ of April 11, 2009, by Mackubin Thomas Owens. As the eminent military historian Sir Michael Howard argued shortly after 9/11, the status of al Qaeda terrorists is to be found in a distinction first made by the Romans and subsequently incorporated into [...]
to “take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty”
April 7, 2009President Obama is now in Iraq. We read in today’s Times that while addressing hundreds of troops gathered at a military base the president said that it was time for Iraqis to “take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty,” winning thereby enthusiastic applause. President Obama greeted military personnel at Camp Victory in Baghdad [...]
