travisseay.com

Difference

TS — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:40:47 +0000

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

–L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

What is an Information Society?

TS — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:55:43 +0000

Gadget

TS — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:52:28 +0000

“[T]he more a man becomes dependent on the gadgets whose smooth functioning assures him a tolerable life at the material level, the more estranged he becomes from an awareness of his inner reality.”

Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society (1952)

Memory

TS — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 19:26:12 +0000

Although it helps, memory is not the same thing as history.

TS — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:33:35 +0000

Originality does not consist in

saying what no one

has ever said before,

but in saying exactly what

you think yourself.

–James Stephens

Err

TS — Tue, 10 May 2011 01:39:40 +0000

To err is human.

To arrr is pirate.

Response

TS — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:38:35 +0000

The disposition that moves some to outbursts of non-constructive, sometimes destructive criticism is too often a self-centered one and one that is grounded in fear. Who knows what the right response is in all cases—or whether or not there should always be a response. But it makes sense that a good response should be compassionate and should reflect empathy, in place of vengeance.

TS — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:52:04 +0000

“Anyone who has declared someone

else to be an idiot, a bad

apple, is

annoyed when it turns

out in the end

that he isn’t.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

On Categorical Cognition

TS — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:50:15 +0000

The scholar tends to place things in their separate categories of analysis and attempts to make statements about causality based on those distinctions.

But there is something about experiencing an event or events that is lost in the subsequent translation of those events. More often than not, experience–the ways in which events both process and get processed by experience–goes beyond the rational categories of analysis that are set out for their interpretation by historians, for example. As experiencers themselves, scholars recognize this.

There is a subjective component to knowing, to expertise, to efficiency of mind. And the problem for the responsible scholar lies in making sense of the subjective without objectifying that experience as irrational.

CRITICAL INPUTS

TS — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:14:14 +0000

I would like to direct readers to a paper I wrote several years ago on the issue of teacher quality. Here is the link.

Critical Inputs–An Economic and Historical Exploration of Teacher Quality

Also, here is a link to SB-736, the Florida Senate Bill on teacher merit pay and tenure which recently passed in the Florida House and is widely expected to be signed into law by Governor Rick Scott.

The paper includes a section on merit pay for teachers, and it discusses various inputs to teacher quality. In short, the paper argues that teacher quality cannot be ignored as an economic input for education.

I will not comment any further on this now but may discuss it more later, perhaps in response to discussions or comments it elicits among readers of this site. At this point, I ask that if you read this paper, you not ascribe a particular opinion or preference to me about the current bill. The paper was, as its title indicates, an exploration of this topic and not a set of recommendations or definitive, specific conclusions; and, as I said, it was written years ago. This does not mean that I do not have an opinion on the topic at hand, but that I would like to encourage a substantive, thoughtful, rational, and respectful discussion of this topic, as it is now upon us in a very real–and no longer theoretical–way.