Determinism is an ages old debate in philosophy involving deep elements of freewill and morality. Now Artificial Intelligence has raised the debate to a different, if not a new, level. While we struggle to understand the human mind and the brain-body functions of ourselves and our domestic and laboratory animals, what is being done with…
A strategy of doing is a planetary imperative because each human being is contributing to changes in earth’s physical and political ecology. Too much of what we are doing, individually and collectively, is not sustainable. We are part of a community and that is our ecology; the place where we interact with ever changing relationships….
Genetic engineering has been with humanity for longer than anyone can imagine. What is now becoming increasingly clear is that engineering new life forms will require more than mere manipulation of what we think we know about genes and the proteins they make. Life is never simple at any level from molecules to ecosystems. A…
June and July have seen an effort to complete a draft of a book on education. Hence no essays posted to this blog since May. The draft was put to bed on July 31. My intent for the month of August is to make an intense effort to revise the draft. The paragraphs below tell…
This morning I began reading a long known but neglected book about education. My beginnings have included the book’s introductions by scholars and contemporary friends of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian intellectual giant who died in 1997 after writing from experience or Praxis of teaching in South America and being both jailed and ostracized. Not many…
The Planetary Imperative came into forcus today when I opened www.raingarden.com to figure out what to do with a URL that has been a disappointment, though with much potential, for nearly 20 years. It has been retitled “Lucrative Website For Sale.” Rain Gardens will hardly save the Earth, but restricting water runoff is a step…
Education Reform has been a long way in coming to American schools. Unfortunately almost nobody seems to realize that the problem with education may just be the schools. We try to continue doing what we have always been doing for better than two centuries and expecting better results. It may be time to try something…
Most of yesterday’s effort centered around the much touted school reform movement in education advocating Project-based Learning or PBL for short. The PBL effort is grounded in laudable goals of assisting the learning of 21st Century skills including creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. It is a worthwhile movement away from the linear application of…
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem. John Kenneth Galbraith Living in Minneapolis for the past two years has made possible re-connection with former colleagues at Normandale Community College. My former NCC colleagues were, and still are, an amazing group who, with few exceptions, were talented and committed people. Almost to…
