“Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.”
George Washington
1 Idea
Schulz’s Razor.:
“Do not attribute to group conspiracy, that which can be explained by cancellation anxiety.” From the outside, it might look like everyone is coordinating to push some ideology or movement.
h/t Chris Williamson
1 Poem
Say not the Struggle nought Availeth
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
Arthur Hugh Clough
1 Picture
The FInding of Moses
1 Essay
A Conversation About “Intellectual Teachers” with Ben Riley
Ben: See, I knew you were the right teacher to ask about this. And I think you’ve made an important distinction among two types of “teaching intellectualism,” which pose related but somewhat distinct challenges.
The question of “how should I, a teacher, teach Johnny, this particular student” strikes me as essentially an engineering question. I’ve discovered the hard way that teachers hate the metaphor of “learning engineering,” yet it strikes me as apt — when teachers design a lesson or task for their students, they are trying to get them (the students) to think about something they otherwise might not be inclined to think about. Students are puzzles, and while they can never be fully solved, I think there are ways in which we can help teachers get better at “engineering” experiences that will help Johnny and his classmates learn.
You are right that we rarely give teachers formal ideas about what students are like, but this is where cognitive science can be helpful, right? We could make sure that teachers have at least a basic understanding of how our minds work, and then use that as the foundation for exploring questions about what to do with that knowledge in a teaching context. While we can’t just snap our fingers to make that happen, I at least see a roadmap to get there, and indeed, that’s the work we do at the organization I founded.
Which brings me to your second aspect of teaching as an intellectual craft. What I hear you saying is there’s a big gap right now between the largely theoretical knowledge produced by university professors and such, and the sorts of questions that might only be visible to people who actually spend most of their days with children. Unfortunately, as you hint at, there is no obvious path to make that more valued. I feel like periodically the idea of “teacher-researcher” floats around but never goes very far. The incentives just don’t exist. We could mount a policy push to create them, but that seems like a hard slog.
Men’s actions are the best guides to their thoughts.
John Locke
1 Idea
Rick Rubin will help the artist record 20-25 songs for their album. They might have an idea that they want the album to be 10 songs. Most people will cut down to 10 immediately. What Rubin suggests is to whittle it down to the 5-6 songs that you simply can’t live without, and then you look at which songs you could which would best complement these foundational songs.
You are in a place to add rather than take away. Ever had salty soup?
Extrapolate for personal use case.
Creativity, holidays, decision-making. (speech?)
1 Poem
[O were my love yon Lilac fair] By Robert Burns
O were my love yon Lilac fair,
Wi' purple blossoms to the Spring,
And I, a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing!
How I wad mourn when it was torn
By Autumn wild, and Winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing,
When youthfu' May its bloom renew'd.
O gin my love were yon red rose,
That grows upon the castle wa';
And I myself a drap o' dew,
Into her bonie breast to fa'!
O there, beyond expression blest,
I'd feast on beauty a' the night;
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest,
Till fley'd awa by Phoebus' light!
Robert Burns
1 Picture
Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon
Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon By John Martin, 1816
Speaking of hunger and infancy, here are some completely gratuitous eyewitness accounts of parents eating their own children during the man-made famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. Communism may have influenced science fiction writers, but real life in the USSR was no picnic.
“Where did all bread disappear, I do not really know, maybe they have taken it all abroad. The authorities have confiscated it, removed from the villages, loaded grain into the railway coaches and took it away someplace. They have searched the houses, taken away everything to the smallest thing. All the vegetable gardens, all the cellars were raked out and everything was taken away. Wealthy peasants were exiled into Siberia even before Holodomor during the ‘collectivization.’ Communists came, collected everything….People were laying everywhere as dead flies. The stench was awful. Many of our neighbors and acquaintances from our street died….Some were eating their own children. I would have never been able to eat my child. One of our neighbors came home when her husband, suffering from severe starvation, ate their own baby daughter. This woman went crazy.”
One has to wait until “Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism,” to meet an actual Eastern European. “Consider Ana Durcheva from Bulgaria,” the author writes, “who was 65 when I first met her in 2011. Having lived her first 43 years under Communism, she often complained that the new free market hindered Bulgarians’ ability to develop healthy amorous relationships. ‘Sure, some things were bad during that time, but my life was full of romance.’” Durcheva’s daughter, in contrast, works too much, “and when she comes home at night she is too tired to be with her husband.”
What are we to make of this? Are we merely to deduce that the life of a young and, apparently, attractive woman behind the Iron Curtain was not completely devoid of pleasure? No. The article is explicit in stating that “communist women enjoyed a degree of self-sufficiency that few Western women could have imagined.”
This is unadulterated rubbish. I grew up under communism, and here is what I recall.
First, all communist countries were run by men; female leaders, like Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir, would have been unthinkable. Women who rose to prominence, like Raisa Gorbachev and Elena Ceausescu, did so purely as appendages of their powerful husbands.
Second, the author concedes that “gender wage disparities and labor segregation persisted, and…the communists never fully reformed domestic patriarchy.” I would say so. In a typical Eastern European family, the woman, in addition to having a day job at a factory, was expected to clean the apartment, shop for food, cook dinner, and raise the children. The Western sexual revolution passed the communist bloc by, and ex-communist countries remain much more patriarchal than their Western counterparts to this day.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
Aristotle
1 Idea
Any spare money you have should be invested in acquiring new skills before investing in the stock market or real estate. Invest in skills until you can no longer spend money to acquire new skills.
At least that’s what Alex Hormozi thinks. According to him, you can almost always invest in new skills. Perspective is key.
Investing is in italics because it requires a change in perspective to view buying courses as a liability Vs. an investment. Most people (likely) view it as a liability because they are conscious of their inability to follow through.
Surprisingly the people who get annoyed at people like this are the same people with a course they sell. Don’t presume my cynicism means disagreement with the idea. Perspective is key.
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.
But to go to school in a summer morn
O: it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn.
The little ones spend the day.
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! then at times I drooping sit.
And spend many an anxious hour.
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower.
Worn thro’ with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy,
Sit in a cage and sing.
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing.
And forget his youthful spring.
O! father & mother. if buds are nip’d,
And blolsoms blown away.
And if the tender plants are strip’d
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and cares dismay.
How shall the summer arise in joy
Or the summer fruits appear,
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
Or bless the mellowing year.
When the blasts of winter appear.
William Blake
1 Picture
Plato’s Academy mosaic from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii
1 Essay
Drilled, not educated
I will warn you, as The Guardian will, that the article is over 18 years old. Although what it lacks in modernity, it more than makes up for in relevance and its wicked indictment of the British education system. As far as I am aware the problem has only got worse and that makes for very sombre reading indeed.
The council was clear about the reasons behind this. It wasn’t the fault of teachers; they were delivering many different courses to students with a wider range of ability than in the past. The problem lay with government decisions to make the syllabus less tough, and more accessible. At the same time, class sizes had been rising, while the supply of good teachers had fallen as the status of the profession had declined. The combination had been disastrous.
If that is the case with mathematics, the question is whether the same could be true of other subjects. Durham University thinks so. Its researchers have given an unchanging general ability test to first-year A-level students ever since 1988. The results show that students of the same ability are now achieving two A-level grades higher in every subject than they were 15 years ago.
This grade inflation began with changes to the system 20 years ago. Until then, grades were awarded in the same fixed proportions, with 70% passing, and 10% getting As. But in the mid-1980s, the government realised that this system, known as norm referencing, offered no scope for proving that standards were being raised. Instead it introduced criterion referencing, where examiners decided in advance that a paper of a particular standard would get a particular grade, regardless of how many other people achieved the same. The result has been that the proportion of passes and top grades has risen with every year; 96% of candidates now pass.
This is from the “Committee on Raising the Standard” in 1894. Ever since letter grades at Harvard were established, perhaps as early as 1883 according to school archives, there’s been concern around the way they’re distributed.
There’s still a lot of talk around Harvard’s grade inflation problem today. It’s hardly a surprise to anyone who studies or teaches here that grades have risen over time. But grade inflation is inextricably linked to a worse problem, one that is seldom discussed: grade compression, where GPAs stop increasing and instead stabilize in the 3.8 to 4.0 range.
To understand grade compression, we first need to understand grade inflation. Looking at a graph of student GPAs since 1889 is sort of like looking at a graph of Harvard’s endowment: It only goes up. In 1950, when Harvey Mansfield was but a freshman at Harvard, the average GPA was estimated at 2.55. Now, it’s much closer to 3.80. Keep in mind these numbers are estimated from Crimson surveys that represent only a part of the student body, combined with third-party analyses of Harvard records, so try to focus on the long-term trend rather than specific GPA averages at any point in time.
Aphthonius was a Greek rhetorician of the fourth century AD; his book on the progymnasmata (including an outline of each exercise and a worked example) became a standard textbook. This is my own, rather makeshift translation. The Greek is sometimes quite difficult, especially in some of the later examples, and I would not want to guarantee that I have got everything right. There is a translation of this and other Greek texts on the progymnasmata in G.A. Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek textbooks of prose composition and rhetoric (Atlanta 2003).
Malcolm Heath
Cicero Accuses Catiline or Cicero Denounces Catiline, By Cesare Maccari, 1888
1. Fable
The fable originated with poets, but is now also used by orators as a means of conveying advice. A fable is a false discourse which gives an image of the truth.
It is variously called Sybarite, Cilician or Cypriot, according to the nationality of its originators; but the name Aesopian is more prevalent, because Aesop was the greatest expert in composing fables.
A fable may be rational, ethical or mixed. The rational is that in which a human being is imagined doing something; the ethical, that which imitates the character of irrational creatures; the mixed, that which is composed of both irrational and rational.
The advice which the fable is intended to convey is called prefabular if placed first, and postfabular if placed at the end.
Aesop
Ethical fable: the crickets and the ants, exhorting young people to work hard
It was the height of summer. The crickets were striking up their tuneful song, but it fell to the ants to toil and gather the harvest by which they were to be sustained through the winter. When winter came the ants were sustained by their labours, but the others’ pleasure ended in need.
Thus youth, if it will not work, fares badly in old age.
Progymnastica
If you went to school in Ancient Rome, what would you have studied? There was no single curriculum or state-mandated educational process as we understand it today, and whatever trends did arise certainly varied over the many centuries of Roman polity. Nonetheless, there were many constants, and the systems of Roman education are, in places, startlingly modern. But that’s a subject for another day.
Hamlet and Horatio in the Cemetery By Eugène Delacroix, 1839
What I want to explore here is the teaching of rhetoric in the Roman world. Rhetoric was born in Greece, and even as the Roman republic rose to power it fell under the spell of Greek culture. The art of public speaking was central to Roman life: whether reciting poetry or stories, prosecuting or defending in a court of law, holding forth in the Senate or addressing the people. And so rhetoric was seen as a pillar of education.
What may surprise you is that there are several surviving textbooks from Ancient Rome, complete with exercises for students, known as Progymnasmata. The most notable was written by Aphthonius of Antioch in the 4th century A.D. He presents fourteen exercises for pupils of rhetoric, increasing in difficulty and significance:
1. Fable (short story using humans or animals as characters with a simple moral message)
2. Narrative (recounting an event, whether fictional or real)
3. Anecdote (elaborating on the words or actions of a famous figure; exploring and explaining them)
4. Maxim or Proverb (write a proverb in the manner or style of a famous writer)
5. Refutation (to present a logical argument against a myth, narrative, or fable)
6. Confirmation (to present a logical argument in favour of something drawn from the same sources as the refutation)
7. Common Topic (critique a general human vice by using stereotypes or generalisations, such as “tyrants” or “murderers” or “thieves”, parsing out the broader principles)
8. Encomium (praise a particular person, place, concept, value, era, animal, plant, or thing)
9. Invective (critique a specific, named individual)
10. Comparison (the combination of two encomiums, or of an encomium and an invective; by contrasting them their respective qualities and characteristics are made clearer)
11. Characterisation (write a speech in the style of a famous figure from history or mythology)
12. Description (describe a person, place, or object in highly specific detail)
13. Thesis (a logical investigation into a political or philosophical question: should one marry? do humans have free will?)
14. Proposal of Law (suggest a new law, then advocate for it, argue against it, and conclude whether it should or should not be passed)
Pericles’ Funeral Oration by Philipp Foltz, 1852
The idea was to write out each exercise, slowly working your way up the ladder of difficulty, until you had mastered the basics. There’s no single best form of education, and nor is it the case that the Romans or Greeks were necessarily any better at educating people than we are. However, times do change, and some good practices can be forgotten.
This exercise was done by Cicero, William Shakespeare, John Milton and Benjamin Franklin amongst others. It is also conducted in too few schools one in a Serbian High School, one in a High School in Kentucky, in many as a school with many locations across the United States and on an academic press online course. These series of exercises, were not considered the last level of learning, but more as a preliminary set of exercises to be repeated many times. They were to prepare the students for a life of partaking in the world, standing up for their beliefs and being prepared to do so in an articulate, well-reasoned manner that could lead them to choosing their preferred seating arrangement to inspiring an exhausted city to continue fighting a vicious invasion.
I plan to use this as an opportunity to advance my own education and improve my own writing ability. If I am going to criticise other writers I shall try to be the Man in the Arena and show my work. We can always improve and it is beautiful when people take opportunities to do so.
Benjamin Franklin reading By David Martin, 1767
Once you stop learning, you start dying
Albert Einstein
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young
Henry Ford
Now onto the Fable.
The Bull and The Goose.
There once was Goose napping in the lake, under the sun. The Goose was using this time to relax and recharge after much flying and feeding, feeding and flying.
The Bull was in a nearby field, sweltering in the qualmy air. The Bull was trudging slowly around the field looking for some fresh grass to graze on.
The Bull, now feeling uncomfortable in the heat wanders over to the lake to cool down. The Bull allows his desire for water to override him and he runs into the lake almost trampling on a mouse and a grouse. In his haste, the Bull causes a large enough ripple that wakes the Goose. Upon his kicking and swimming, the Bull creates a stir on the lakebed making it murky.
The Goose, although thoroughly confused and irritated, says nothing. The Goose says nothing of the rude interruption to his slumber nor his inability to return to the lake due to the disturbed sediment populating the lake as the stars light the depth of the dark night sky.
The Bull returns back to his field cooled off and filled with merriment. The Bull noticed not the mouse or the grouse nor the moose or the Goose. The next day the weather was much opposed to good health. Given the opportunity, the icy breeze could transform any animal into a snow-white crystallised fossil.
The Goose, attempting to avoid becoming a goose-icle, wanders into the field. The Goose sees a nearby bull and asks to peruse the field who nods approvingly. The Bull sees this, feeling that his honour has been impugned and his territory violated rushes up to the Goose screaming and snorting as he does so. The Bull gets so close that The Goose can gaze upon the image reflected back in the septum ring. The Bull rushes and rushes, again and again yet each time The Goose moves not an inch backwards. The Goose stands its ground, so steadfastly it draws a crowd of the other bulls in the field.
The Bulls shout and coo, and snort and huff for The Bull to send The Goose away knowing the taste of ivory. And still The Goose faces this verbal and physical onslaught undeterred, never moving backwards or making an attack on The Bull. Eventually The Bull physically exhausted slunks away. The other bulls escort The Goose off the field. As The Goose leaves he hears The Bull exclaim “Never come back here again!”