Amazon.com Reviews of Other Author's Books
Lately, I've started going on to Amazon.com and reviewing books written by other authors. None of the books I review are dogs, but some inspired me more than others. For example, for those of you who are looking for an excellent introduction to Spinoza -- his own words, but without some of the difficult verbiage that turns people off -- you can find such a book in the attached list. Click to read these reviews
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Vikings Newsgroup
As some of you know, I'm a sports fanatic. My favorite sport is professional football, but I also love watching college football, baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, hockey, boxing ... yes, even poker. If it's a competition, and it doesn't involve cocks, bulls, dogs, or cars, I'm probably interested in the outcome.
As a sports fan, I have a particular affinity for teams and athletes from two places: Stanford (because I went there for college) and Minnesota (because I basically adopted it as my home state when I was a kid, even while living a thousand miles away). During the last few years, I have been fortunate enough to find a community of polysylabbic sports fans who follow the Vikings and, to a lesser extent, the Twins. You can tap into their dialogue by googling "Kansas Viking" and then going on to the "Message Board." Or, you can just click on the attached link. I regularly post under the name "DanAS1." The posts' topics range from sports, to rock n' roll, to people's personal lives. But politics is a verbotin topic. Whenever people have gotten political in the past, it's turned into a flame war. Frankly, that's not an awful sign. At least it shows that people care about what really matters in life. Click to view messageboard
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Educational Writings
In the mid 80s, I became intrigued with the field of education, so much so, in fact, that I even left the practice of law for two years in order to get a masters degree in education and work for an education policy research firm. In large part, my fascination reflected profound frustrations with the educational status quo. The trials and tribulations of Sam Kramer in The Creed Room reveal many of those frustations. So do my educational writings of the late 80s.
One of my greatest complaints involved the public schools' failure to expose children to instruction in philosophy and comparative religion. To me, this was a by-product of the establishment in the public schools of an American Civil Religion. I viewed that religion as an amalgam of three components: (a) scientism, or the exaggerated faith in the power of the natural sciences to answer our deepest philosophical questions; (b) American nationalism, which extols the "American way of life" (i.e., its political and economic system) and talks about Americans as some sort of "chosen people" with a manifest destiny; and (c) Christianity, presented simply as a spiritual supplement to the other two components of our Civil Religion, one that is available as a source of inspiration and values that needn't restrict either our daily actions or our scientific beliefs whenever there is a conflict between "religion" and science.
In two publications, I called for educators to recognize that they were, indeed, establishing a religion in schools, and to take steps to stop doing so in the name of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, I called for more courses in comparative religion and philosophy, and a greater appreciation for the value of exposing children to multiple points of view whenever discussing issues of profound religious significance. In other words, I called on the schools to arm students with the ability to recognize the great questions of religion and to think for themselves as to how to resolve those questions.
The longest exposition of my argument was published in a law review article entitled "The Creation of a Free Marketplace of Religious Ideas: Revisiting the Establishment Clause after the Alabama Secular Humanism Decision," 39 Alabama Law Review 1 (Fall 1987). Subsequently, I published an article on the same general topic in a leading educational journal. The article was entitled "Public Schools and the Road to Religious Neutrality," 70 Phi Delta Kappan 10, at 759 (June 1989). That latter article was reprinted by Diskin Publishing Group in the 1990-1991 volume of the Annual Editions series on Education.
In 1991, I was also privileged to serve as the lead author of a chapter entitled "Philosophy of Education" in a commonly used education textbook. The chapter came out in the second edition of Teachers, Schools, and Society, by Sadker and Sadker (New York: McGraw Hill).
For the most part, my research on educational philosophy taught me how out of step my own educational ideas were with the mainstream of late 20th century education. Suffice it to say that I prefer more of a great books, "think deeply not necessarily broadly" approach. Unfortunately, that approach might not work too swimingly on standardized achievement tests, and that's what seems to be important in education today -- tests, tests, tests.
Good luck to all teachers who hope to instill true intellectuality among your students. You'll need it.
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