Something to Know - 9 September

1.  Getting back to culling and assembling this piece on a regular basis is getting confusing, frustrating, and frankly - depressing.  What do you put out here when all seems to be so negative?   Rather than name all the issues, and figure out what is more relevant to think about....I just figure you guys see and hear about it all day long, and are just as weary.   Having started my college auditing class yesterday (Colonial Latin American History -at Pomona College), and getting ready to volunteer my time in helping out at the admissions office at Pomona by interviewing freshman applicants later this month, I am more inclined to speak to the issues relating to education and the opening of minds through the college and university experience.  Here is one piece by David Brooks that speaks to the real issue of why people should continue to expand the mind, and not be overwhelmed by pressures to learn a skill and make money from the "git-go":

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/opinion/david-brooks-becoming-a-real-person.html?emc=eta1

2.  Following up on the previous piece by Brooks, here is one subject that got my blood boiling.   I think you can figure it out, but of all the evils in the world, there is one among the many that is of the worst kind; the suppression of knowledge.  Radical forces that advocate the dumbing down of contemporary thought in favor of the "moral purity" of the past.  Censoring the syllabus of college readings is just as "säuberung" , the literary purge (book burnings) that took place in Nazi Germany:

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-college-reading-20140909-story.html#page=1

--

****
Juan
 

 

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

-- Ray Bradbury