The greatest scientific minds of your generation have determined that you will probably love "Hitch" starring Will Smith. Submit to the inevitability of getting Hitched.
I don't know, I find these the least appealing of any kinds of test for intelligence. On the fly problem solving? Adaptation to new situations? To me, ravens using simple tools to pick up shiny things seem more intelligent than the kind of machine displayed on Jeopardy or at chess matches.
Does it seem odd to anyone else to position Jobs as an Objectivist in line with Rand's ethics when he was avowedly a Buddhist? Not everyone who makes stuff and cares about quality control is an "ethical egoist," or whatever you call it.
I run a small record label, one that I'd like to think acknowledges all the realities of trying to make and sell music in the post-Napster age.
My problem with something like this is, I suppose, my problem with Talent Shows, or "Vote For Your Favorite Artist!" contests on MTV, or American Idol: the wisdom of the crowds when applied to aesthetics produces inane garbage.
The purpose of art is to expand the human experience. Good bands shock and surprise you, give you new sensations in new ways. The best musicians produce intensely personal expressions of their own emotional reality, to which people with similar internal clockwork respond.
Bring everyone together to see which music they can agree on, and what they will end up picking is the average of all their emotional experiences, the music which relates only the most accessible and universal of concerns. Sorry, but even impeccably-crafted boring music is still boring.
To bring this down to Earth a bit: the future of music is disintegration, not centralization. It makes no sense for me to compete for eyeballs in a crowded marketplace when I can set up my own download site overnight and start getting in touch with blogs that directly address people who like the music I play.
Music will continue to niche down and atomize until there are taste-makers, distribution channels, and a healthy community of artists for every possible genre and sub-genre. My "conversion rate," so to speak, will be much higher on sites like these than it would be in giant competitive marketplaces like the one linked above.
I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate question: How do you justify this belief?
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues, or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated opinion?
A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist. I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so.
We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't have any other choice.
Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution?
Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.
I'm a history teacher, with Master's degrees in both History and Education, and what McCullough says here deeply resonates with me.
History, though, is only part of what you are concerned with, as a high school teacher, and increasingly it is not the most important.
Take, for example, my student teaching experience. When I asked a supervisor whether I should focus on Industrialization or Urbanization, or whether I would have enough time to take a detour to discuss the "robber barons," I was told that it didn't matter what I taught them. It didn't matter if I never got to the Cold War, as was written in the curriculum map, and it didn't matter if we covered Vanderbilt but not Edison, or if I spent a week on the First World War but only a day on the Civil War.
"The only thing that matters is that you teach them how to write," she said.
You see, our school was being examined by the state (Connecticut), and our standardized test scores were low. History teachers were openly referred to as "secondary english teachers," and our purpose was to teach children to write essays with thesis sentences. Every week, we were to devote class time to writing lessons, go over things such as topic sentences, conclusion paragraphs, editing, grammar, etc. Never mind that the kids have nothing to write about, nothing to say, because they haven't actually engaged with the world in any meaningful way. They could have been writing VCR instruction manuals.
History isn't tested on standardized tests. It isn't tested because no one cares. Writing is important because it gets you a job. History never gets anyone a higher salary (with the possible exception of history teachers), and so who gives a shit?
You have no idea how demoralizing it was to see the subject I love, that I passionately believe in, degraded in this way. Who cares what you teach? It's all a bunch of useless bullshit anyway, right?
Our problem with history is a symptom of our problem with education, which is that we don't know what it's for. We don't know, or can't decide, why we still adhere to the classical, liberal form of education. When little Joan or Sam or Miguel looks up at us and asks why he has to learn about Thomas Edison, the administrators of our school systems have no idea what to tell them. They don't say that the world is more interesting, more vivid, more meaningful, when you understand how it works. They don't say that we only understand ourselves when we understand where we come from. They don't say that much of popular culture has roots in historical precedents, and that understanding historical references opens up a whole new level of cultural understanding. They don't say that all Americans have a civic duty to understand their own past, and they don't say that understanding the past is the only way to avoid repeating our worst atrocities.
They say that it will all help them get a good job.
You make some good points, but..."some dispute over bus seating?" I assume you're talking about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, widely considered to be the first major victory of the Civil Rights Movement? The one where a young 25-year-old preacher named Martin Luther King first rose to national prominence? The one where the non-violent protest tactics of groups like the SCLC, which would go on to dominate the struggle for civil rights until the 1970s, were given their first serious test on the national stage?
The problem with the approach you suggest is that students do not, and will not, care about or engage with material devoid of meaning and context. How will you get kids to memorize the "dates of key events" without getting them to care about "what they mean?" I can barely get my history classes to sit down.
History is all about meaning and context. Dates are inherently meaningless; it's the stories that history tells us about ourselves that give it worth. We need dates, and we need chronology; it just seems like your approach would lead directly to me (a history teacher) getting beaten up.
It's 2.99 on Kindle, but send me an email and I'll send you a free pdf copy. [email protected] is my email.
It sucks, but it gets better.