Tagged: education

4

Uncritical Racism and the Queen

Many otherwise good people are upset with the remarks made by a tech school prof who said she hoped Queen Elizabeth died a slow and painful death. Evil, stupid, ignorant are some of the epithets I have heard applied to the prof in question, but would anyone not evil, stupid, and ignorant be interested in teaching uncritical racism, an ideology designed to stir up hatred and violence among all racial groups. And, what kind of a school, once famous for engineering, would inflict such a course on would be engineers and architects? Obviously, not a school anyone in his right...

4

The Autodidact on Aristotle

The one figure who defines modern thought is Aristotle, not of course because modern thinkers have followed him, but because since Galileo and Descartes and Bacon, scientists and philosophers have defined themselves by their opposition to Aristotle

0

The Life of an Autodidact

This is a revised version of a piece first published in 2014. Once upon a time I decided to learn Japanese.  I had none of the usual practical reasons: no business interests that would take me to Japan nor even an academic project comparing Noh plays with Attic tragedy.  I knew next to nothing of Japan, though as a child my imagination had been stirred by the Mikado, and later, when a college friend persuaded me to read the Tale of Genjii, my mind was haunted by images of beautiful men and women spending languorous evenings composing allusive verses to...