Going deep into a single thinker doesn’t mean you can’t be a broad generalist. Think about it, if you read five books on one subject you will know more about it than 95% of the population and be able to converse with specialists. Yet it’s only five books. You can repeat this tons of times for whatever topic/thinker strikes your fancy. It’s so much more fruitful than a single book in passing.
Tag: natural
The Destructive Habit of Evaluating Everything We Do
We are in the mental habit of constantly evaluating everything we do, to see if we’re worthy or not. This mental habit of evaluating everything — while completely normal and natural — is actually pretty destructive. Why?
Schooling is Not Inevitable
As back-to-school time approaches and articles swarm on how to make the transition to September easier and more successful, maybe it’s worth pausing to ask: If something is so unpleasant for so many of us, why are we doing it?
Worksheets or Wonder: A Story
The sky was a bright blue, clear with wispy white clouds and a strong June sun. My four children were ankle-deep in ocean water, shrieking with excitement each time they spotted a hermit crab or a sea star or a snail as the tide retreated.
How Mass Schooling Perpetuates Inequality
For kids like Matt, schooling can bring out the worst behaviors. Like a trapped tiger–angry and afraid–they rebel. Unable to conform properly to mass schooling’s mores, they get a label: troubled, slow learner, poor, at-risk. They will carry these scarlet letters with them throughout their 15,000 hours of mandatory mass schooling, emerging not with real skills and limitless opportunity, but further entrenched in their born disadvantage.
Public Education Vs. Public Schooling
The primary difference between public education and public schooling is that the former is openly accessible and self-directed, while the latter is compulsory and coercive. Both are community-based and taxpayer-funded; both can lead to an educated citizenry. But public education–like public libraries, public museums, public parks, community centers, and so on—can support the education efforts of individuals, families, and local organizations with potentially better outcomes than the static system of mass schooling.
@YesYoureRacist Crowdsources Social Preferencing
The main objection to @YesYoureRacist doesn’t cut much ice with me. The project is not an “invasion of privacy” or a “violation of rights.” The Charlottesville marchers engaged in public action with the explicit purpose of attracting attention. Mission accomplished. They got noticed.
Why You Should Pull Your Kid Out of School
Kudos to these parents for listening to their parental instincts, despite pressure from the school to do otherwise. They saw that forcing their son to read at age 6, before he was ready, was causing him to hate reading and despise books. They recognized that the rigidity and uniformity characteristic of the mass schooling model was smothering their son’s curiosity and innate, self-educative ability.
How an Airborne Ranger Became a Voluntaryist
Government directives to do evil (whether by commission or omission) do not override our conscience and our understanding of right and wrong. I favor agoristic obviation of government institutions. I support voluntary alternatives to government services as much as I can and continue to encourage government institutions to reduce and eliminate their restrictions on our freedoms.
Charlottesville
The Charlottesville demonstrations got out-of-hand; they were non-peaceable. But is anybody surprised? Part of the baggage of a free republic is that it gets out-of-hand sometimes.