Inauguration

To those of you who choose to peruse my meandering verbiage, I extend my sincere thanks. I hope that you will find here something of value, something that will push the limits of your consciousness and understanding. I can tell you beforehand that my writings will extend across a wide range of topics, from my views on political and social issues relevant to our time and condition, to less grandiose ponderings on the topics of my personal hobbies, to my more intimate introspections regarding such subjects as science, spiritualty, history, and anything else that seems to me worthy of being cast in print. I heartily invite my readers to respond to my posts, but... there is a catch:

I insist that on my blog, civility and courtesy must be respected at all times. While we must resign ourselves to the inevitability of disagreement, I will not allow comments that do not further the aim of civilized dialogue. If the issue be serious enough, and the feelings run so hot that conversation must be abandoned, then the time has surely come when we must resort to violence and bloodshed, and under such circumstances there would no longer be any need of blogging. So, while our debate remains here, it shall remain clean, rational and respectful. No exceptions.

As I am new to this endeavor, I reserve the right to expand upon my guidelines for participation in the future, but barring any extraordinary circumstances, that's it, there are no other rules or restrictions. I want those who comment to feel free to express themselves honestly no matter what they may feel or think.

Now then, let's get on with it...

Greetings & Salutations, as the small spider once said. I would like to take a moment to preface my next entry for you.

I have been working on a project with my father, who is a teacher, on the crisis of the American educational system. In the end, our work will take the form of a published book on the subject - a book that we have every hope of successfully spurring sorely needed and widely controversial changes in the way Americans understand, conceive of, and implement the educational process from K thru 12th grade. We are not the first to have such hopes, and we are only the latest in a long line of "educationalists" who hold such radical and unconventional visions of how our country's educational institutions might be improved. But I did not intend to spend my time today talking about our book; I want to limit the scope of my focus to the thesis of a different book, one that I have read in the course of my research. The book of which I am speaking is not new - in fact, I was astonished to find how relevant and contemproary are its diagnoses and prescriptions given that it was written forty years ago! Nevertheless, it cuts right to the heart of our educational trainwreck. The authors, Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner, published Teaching As A Subversive Activity in 1969, and subsequently the book was lost to the twilight zone. You don't believe me? How else does one explain the fact that every problem they addressed then still exists - in spades - in our schools today? Obviously, the trucks that carried the freshly printed copies from the press were beamed up by alien spaceships and cast into that great fireball in the sky, because no one on this planet seems to have ever read a page of it. If they had, something would surely have been different by now. But I digress. So, to return to the subject at hand, let me declare here and now that this - our educational trainwreck, as I will call it - will be the topic of our first several posts, and Postman & Weingartner's book will be our jumping-off point. In my next post, I intend to outline the main thesis laid out in Teaching As A Subversive Activity, and to show why the book is more relevant now than ever. Concurrently, we will investigate potential solutions to our educational crisis, both those offered by Postman & Weingartner as well as those suggested by others who have made it their business to try to fix this problem. In the succeeding posts, I may diverge more and more from the book specifically in an effort to ferret out the real reasons why drastic change in our educational system, despite being critically necessary, has been so elusive for more than a generation. So, happy reading! I hope that you are looking forward to this as much as I am. I beseech your patience, as I have not already written any of what I have promised to you, but I will work diligently to deliver. I hope you will check back over the next few weeks for updates and comments.

Discere Aude,

Hephaestus