One of the clichés of academia which even non-academics know is “publish or perish.” In its most common understanding, it implies that those who publish more are perceived as productive scholars, worthy of recruitment and promotion. But there are other reasons for publishing. One is to establish priority for one’s ideas. In academia, ideas are …
Category Archive: Education and learning
Jan 03 2008
Precision in language
(I am taking a break from original posts due to the holidays and because of travel after that. Until I return, here are some old posts, updated and edited, for those who might have missed them the first time around. New posts should appear starting Monday, January 14, 2008.) Some time ago, a commenter to …
Dec 06 2007
Reflections on writing the posts on evolution and the law
When I started out to write the series of posts on evolution and the law, I originally intended it to be about ten posts in all, divided roughly equally between the Scopes trial, the Dover trial, and the period of legal evolution in between them. As those readers who have stayed with the series are …
Aug 28 2007
Reflections on the working poor
(Text of the talk given by me to the first year class at the Share the Vision program, Severance Hall, Cleveland, OH on Friday, August 24, 2007 at 1:00 pm. The common reading for the incoming class was David Shipler’s book The Working Poor: Invisible in America.) Welcome to Case Western Reserve University! The people …
Aug 22 2007
What makes us change our minds?
(I am taking a short vacation from new blog posts. I will begin posting new entries again, on August 27, 2007. Until then, I will repost some early ones. Today’s one is from March 28, 2005, edited and updated.) In an earlier post, I described the three kinds of challenges teachers face. Today I want …
Aug 21 2007
The purpose of teaching
(I am taking a short vacation from new blog posts. I will begin posting new entries again, on August 27, 2007. Until then, I will repost some early ones. Today’s one is from March 24, 2005, edited and updated.) I have been teaching for many years and encountered many wonderful students. I remember in particular …
Apr 05 2007
How to read scholarly works
Most of us in our lives will be required to read a lot of stuff and it will take a lot of time. To become more efficient at it, it helps to realize that there are many types of readings, and that you need to adopt different reading strategies for the different kinds of documents …
Mar 09 2007
A low-brow view of books
In yesterday’s post, I classified the appreciation of films according to four levels. At the lowest level is just the story or narrative. The next level above that is some message that the director is trying to convey and which is usually fairly obvious. The third level is that of technique, such as the quality …
Aug 31 2006
Keeping creationism out of Ohio’s science classes
Recall that the pro-IDC (intelligent design creationism) forces in Kansas received a setback in their Republican primary elections earlier this month. Now there is a chance to repeat that in Ohio. I wrote earlier about a challenge being mounted to the attempt by Deborah Owens-Fink (one of the most pro-IDC activists in Ohio) to be …
May 19 2006
What makes us good at learning some things and not others?
(I will be traveling for a few weeks and rather than put this blog on hiatus, thought that I would continue with my weekday posting schedule by reposting some of the very early items, for those who might have missed them the first time around.) One of the questions that students ask me is why …
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