How the Web changes your reading habits

This is all very interesting but what if you don't want to "forage for information"? What if you just like to read?

Smart idiots

We've all had to deal with them: smart people who defend stupid ideas. Why do they do it?

It's all about the rhetoric

Schopenhauer was the crown prince of gloom and bitterness, but he had a sense of humour. He was one of those little trolls who loved to drive people nuts with his arguments.

A's for everyone

It's all over but the crying. The grades are posted and the marksharks are churning the waters. Read more.

Diggin' the arts in Moscow

There used to be an iron curtain: now there's arts and ideas.Check it out.

Tests a failure

Georgia is abandoning standardised testing in its community colleges. What a surprise!Standarisation is another word for mediocrity.

I are confuse

If you can't trust Microsoft's grammar checker whom can you trust? Scholars who study such things say it lets too many errors pass. Read the article.
Here's an idea: pay attention in English class.

Didn't Plato write about something like this?

Capitol Bill Aims to Curb Leftist Professors
In Florida, university students could sue professors who teach theories that challenge their values.

Site of Interest

Sign and Sight
The subtitle is "Arts, Essays, Ideas from Germany". If, like me, you don't read or speak German, this site is a great source for articles from German newspapers and magazines. Main emphasis is on politics, cultural issues, and the arts.

Build it and they will take over

Trading Places
Management guru Peter Drucker gives an overview of the complexities of multiple world economies, all of which began in the States. No matter how you cut it, most of what's in the world's interest doesn't seem to be in the best interests of the US.

Cheaters are good for education?

How cheating helps drive better instruction
According to someone named Greg van Belle, cheating can improve education by driving teachers to change the way they create assignments. The day I visited the site all of the ads along the side were for essay mills. Hmm, what conclusion will young minds draw?

Is Frantz Fanon Still Relevant?

The Chronicle: 3/18/2005: Is Frantz Fanon Still Relevant?
Homi K. Bhabha is sort of sure, but then again, maybe not. Have globalisation and the wired world made struggles for national determination obsolete? Sounds to me he's being seduced by the dark side.

ipod, therefore ??

New York Seen by Laura Conaway
Ipods are drawing a lot of criticism as isolating, expensive status symbols. Now they are inspiring street art.
I wear mine at the gym so I don't have to listen to the crappy music they play over their sound system.

The perfect education system?

New Statesman - Inside Islam's ''terror schools''
What happens when students and faculty have a perfectly shared vision? In the madrasas of Pakistan everyone "knows" right from wrong. Of course, no women need apply.

Site of Interest

I've discovered this very interesting online journal called the Electronic Journal of Radical Organizational Theory which comes out of the University of Waikato in New Zealand. I've been in college administration for about 6 years, and have always felt a little out of place, because I've "risen" through the ranks and am not a trained administrator. EJROT is a refreshing change from the neo-con, consumerist pose struck by most management theorists.
The article by Mary Boyce, listed below, is from this site.

Site of Interest

Eduguru

Gramscian activism meets public administration policy

At the nexus: The transformative practice of public administration Dr. Lisa A. Zanetti Assistant Professor
The received wisdom in schools of public administration is that you work from theoretical models and apply them to something called "real life". What if we were to ask the "real" people what they thought was important in their lives and build policy based on their experiences? Who would need all those highly paid experts?

Now that I have tenure I'll tell you what I really think!

Teaching critically as an act of praxis and resistance
by: Mary E. Boyce

What happens when a post modernist takes a job teaching in a school of management? A crisis of conscience and identity. Great motivation for a soul searching article:"this paper presents an overview of critical pedagogy, shares examples of taking a critical perspective in the teaching of management and organization studies, and considers teaching as an arena of praxis and resistance."

It hurts to self-assess

Learning Abstracts, March 2001, Volume 4, Number 2: "LEARNING FROM THE LEARNING COLLEGES:
OBSERVATIONS ALONG THE JOURNEY
Kay McClenney
The "League for Innovation" is an organization of (mostly) American community colleges. A few years ago they launched an intiative to create "the learning college," using a select number of "vanguard" colleges as test adopters of theories put forward by Terry O'Banion. This article is an update on the project. Read between the lines for the true story.