Memorising poetry was once common in classrooms. But it has, for the most part, gone out of style. There are good reasons for this. Memorisation can clash with creativity and analytical thought. Rote learning can be seen as mindless, drone-like, something done without really thinking about why we’re doing it and what the thing we memorise might mean. […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
Ode to the poem: why memorising poetry still matters for human connection
U California: We only hire SJWs
Watching the Democratic debates really highlights the flaw of degeneracy1 within an organization. To even get on the stage, they all needed to have the same fairly narrow set of views. Not only does this make a debate pretty difficult to have, it also makes it easy to expose how far off the rails things […] … learn more→
The fascinating history of boredom
“I’m bored” is a statement many parents dread hearing during the summer holidays. Should parents scramble to fill the unstructured time of summer for their kids — so they don’t complain of nothing to do (or worse, get into trouble)? Or should they allow children time, perhaps, to be bored? Indeed, today, the popular idea exists, […] … learn more→
Silicon Valley wants to read your mind – here’s why you should be worried
Not content with monitoring almost everything you do online, Facebook now wants to read your mind as well. The social media giant recently announced a breakthrough in its plan to create a device that reads people’s brainwaves to allow them to type just by thinking. And Elon Musk wants to go even further. One of the Tesla boss’s […] … learn more→
Free college proposals should include private colleges
Students can use federal financial aid to attend any college they want, whether public or private. But the “free college” proposals floated by some 2020 presidential candidates would increase federal funding only for community colleges or state-run universities. Private nonprofit universities would be excluded. The question is: Why? From my vantage point as scholar of economics of higher […] … learn more→
Ohio State gets anti-white discrimination lawsuit
You needn’t sit long in an ideological class on campus or in re-education seminar before you’re told something along the lines of “you can’t be racist against white people because they have all the power.” Obviously, that “all the power” part is rubbish for anyone paying attention to politics or the world, but it’s the […] … learn more→
Why building community – even through discomfort – could help stressed college students
It is a growing problem on campuses across America. Students entering college are reporting levels of anxiety, depression and social isolation higher than previous generations. The phrase “mental health crisis” has become commonplace within higher education circles. Today’s undergraduates belong to the group known as Generation Z, iGen or post-millenials, defined roughly as those born between 1997 and […] … learn more→
‘Transformative’ open access publishing deals are only entrenching commercial power
Plan S has already been credited with sparking something of a revolution in journal publishing. Major publishers are beginning – slowly and reluctantly in some cases – to replace their traditional “big deals” with what are being called “transformative deals”. Often negotiated with national consortia of libraries and research institutes, these combine access to subscription […] … learn more→
The university for seniors, key to active and healthy aging
The aging of the population is an undeniable global trend with a social impact at all levels to the point that, as stated in the United Nations World Population Outlook Report (2017) , it is one of the social transformations most significant of the 21st century with consequences on services, health, education, family structure, forms of coexistence […] … learn more→
Get rid of private schools? We’d be better tackling inequalities between state schools
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the 20th Etonian to become prime minister of the UK. Most of his cabinet is composed of privileged, privately educated people, with two-thirds of his ministers among the 7% of the population who went to fee-paying schools. With more than half of Britain’s senior judges, top civil servants and diplomats also privately educated […] … learn more→
