WHICH one would YOU choose if you could be granted only one?

Health would promise a longer, quality life, which, if you live in the USA, could be a boon. If you live elsewhere that might or might not be a boon. Still, if one has health, wealth and happiness can, if desired, follow.

Wealth wold promise a more varied life, though, without health it might be either tempered, or very short. Then there’s the issue of whether wealth (or it’s one step up cousin, power) ever really brings happi...

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CALL it a paradigm shift, a wisdom transformation or weltanschauung crisis, I was thinking this morning that our species has evolutionarily experienced several major shifts in point-of-view, one of the more interesting for me being the shift from a “horizontal” to a “vertical” viewpoint.

We are, after all, descended from the oceans, with it’s particular, salty, “horizontal-axis” orientation, experiencing a major shift to airy, “vertical” bipedal orientation when our ancesto...

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NOW there’s an interesting, amazingly paradoxical word (I nearly wrote “world,” thank you, Dr. Freud for that Freudian slip). To say someone is “in-sane” would logically be the opposite of saying he or she is “insane.” But what is sanity, and who’s to say what it actually means. The online Oxford Languages dictionary defines sanity as “the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner,” the key words being “normal” and “rational.” Think for a moment a...

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A doctor of philosophy degree wherein one knows more and more about less and less. The key is the word philosophy, meaning “love of wisdom,” whereas doctorate simply implies the highest degree (of). But seriously, what is wisdom? Or knowledge (shouldn’t all degreed individuals possess knowledge)? And where do information and data fit in?

In my experience, the lowest form of education involves the memorization of data. Having a storehouse of data at one’s fingertips used to be a major...

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AS promised, today’s post follows on yesterdays. Talk is cheap as some would point out; action is something else altogether. Still, both come together in Plato’s famous (or infamous) REPUBLIC depending on your point of view. The 10-book “series” is is a Socratic dialogue, on justice, the just city-state, and the just human. According to Wikipedia, Socrates talks with various Athenians and foreigners about the meaning of justice and whether a just man is happier than an unjust one. In ...

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THE world having survive two global wars between fascist dictatorships and democracies appears to not have been enough for the losers, rising again from the ashes, this time China, North Korea, Russia, Iran and allies are ready and willing to bet the lives of their people on another attempt at conquering the world. Sigh. Isn’t there enough misery in the world without another war? Or is this simply an ill-fated effect of overpopulation, fueled by individual fear, greed and hatred?

I posted ...

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IF there’s one thing that’s totally unscientific, it’s human behavior. Especially “leadership” behavior. I’ve seen and experienced it first hand “on the set” (see https://www.netflix.com/title/80990849 and you’ll wonder how ANY movie of value could have been made) and watched in awe and horror during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yfIoHXOO9E). So, what’s new with President Putin and the manufactured Ukraine Crises. Nothing. ...

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Now there's a question worthy of asking. It's not hard to agree that education today is "in trouble." But how could one begin to "fix" it?

Well, I hate to have to suggest it, but "Read my book!" -- UNLOCK THE GENIUS WITHIN (Rowman and Littlefield Education 2015). It's not about more money, or better equipment, or harder tests. It's about critically examining the very foundations of education today. For example, distance learning was always a sign of a second class college or university, or wor...
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I don't typically comment on politics, but as a retired academic, I've watched with appall the governance of our great nation under Mr. Donald Trump, a businessman extraordinaire (though not necessarily in the positive sense). I've watched our nation become a corporation, with a single dominant, overbearing CEO focused on one main area: money. I say money, rather than economy, which is an entirely different governmental topic. 

I was, at first, primarily surprised, when I learned that Mr. Trum...
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There's an increasing amount of confusion these days about what education is and isn't. It's hard to separate the fact from "fake news." But there's a couple of "facts" that can be relied on, even in these changing times:

First, there's a big difference from the business of education (involved in the selling of products) and the provision of education (involved in the service of educating learners). The former deals in money; the latter in truth. These days, educational institutions are sorely...
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Well, I'm back on my academic soapbox again, and this issue, in particular, is one close to my academic heart. Something happened -- subtly shifted -- in the 1960's with the advent of computing and the widespread application of statistics as a way to "prove" that something is valid ("true"). Stress within academic institutions, especially "higher" learning institutions, began shifting towards acquiring a working memory of data (raw numbers) and information (numbers with attached units, e.g. d...
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I'm often asked where in the great scheme of things educational I think our current American system of education falls.  On the surface it seems like an easy question that begs a simple "rank" answer.  Think about it awhile, however, and both the question and any answer that might result become complexly rank.  As an academician, I value clearity, completeness and conciseness, in that order, so, I have decided to take on this "simple" question as the topic of today's entry. 

Hold your nose!  ...
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