A Mathematician’s Lament
A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in ...
Bertrand Russell on Critical Thinking
The ideal of critical thinking is a central one in Russell’s philosophy, though this is not yet generally recognized in the literature on critical thinking. For Russell, the ideal is embedded in the fabric of philosophy, science, liberalism (classical, pre-NewSpeak) and rationality, and this p...
Civil Disobedience
Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a moral duty to avoid allowing a government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated to write this essay by his disgust with the U.S. system of enslavement and the illegal land grab commonly referred to in the U.S. as the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), and in Mexico as the Intervención Estadounidense en México (U.S. intervention in Mexico).
Democracy and Education
The seminal work on public education by one of the most important scholars of the century.
John Trudell
John Trudell was a poet, recording artist, actor, civil rights activist and world-renowned speaker whose international following reflects the universal language of his words, work and message.
Columbus was lost. He didn’t have an idea what planet he was on, he di...
Lifeboat
Volunteers from a German nonprofit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts, which had set out from Libya, in the middle of the night.
