On time!
Quick review on this week's readings:
April 29 1001 Nights: 2/5 Not as good as some of the other 1001 Nights sections, but I'm amused by the on head burden bearing.
April 30 "First Inaugural Address" by Washington: 3/5 It's easier to talk about laws when there are less of them.
May 1 "Of Person's One Would Wish To Have Seen" by Hazzlit: 1/5 Felt very superficial and pointless.
May 2 "Lecture on Magnetism and Electricity" by Faraday: 4/5 Really cool to look at a plan for a lecture from 150 years ago.
May 3 The Prince by Machiavelli: 3/5 Great use of real world examples.
May 4 "Science and Culture" by Huxley: 3/5 I don't agree with a lot of what he had to say, but I think the topic is good to include in the readings.
May 5 Life is a Dream by De La Barca: 2/5 Reading plays is hard. Seemd funny
Weekly Average: 2.28 Really being carried on the back of good instructional writing this week.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
"Science and Culture" by Huxley was the thinker this week. One of the things I like to talk about when I speak with people in real life about this project is how interesting it is that Elliot created one of the most enduring liberal education curriculums, and was also behind the "professionalization" of American universities with majors, thus also having a hand in the decimation of liberal education. Huxley's essay is definitely on the "major" side of things. He pays very brief lip service to the value of the liberal arts, but it feels transparently bullshit to me.
A lot of my thoughts on this weeks readings are education related (Faraday's literal lecture notes, Machiavelli's great use of concrete examples, Huxley's education philosophy). Overall (as an ed major), I wish we'd learned more about the philosophy of education in undergrad. It's a term that gets thrown around a lot, but I don't feel like most teachers could really tell you much, beyond whatever boilerplate "prepare students to be successful after school" and a couple of buzzwords that are current. There's a lot of room for debate in the value of more general vs specialized education and we barely talk about it.
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