Category Archives: Learning

Every parent of a son should read The Wonder of Boys

Being a parent of a son and a daughter, I’m regularly amazed at the differences in how my children develop and view the world. Those experiences, along with some recent articles discussing the relative merits of masculinity and femininity in our culture, have gotten me digging into the topic of boys.

I’m only a couple chapters into listening to Michael Gurian’s The Wonder of Boys (2006), and I am already blown away. The bulk of what I’ve heard so far addresses the unique, inalienable, and inextricable ways in which males (especially boys) process information, emotions, and the world around us. As a parent (and a man), I find it fascinating, useful, informative, and compelling. Continue reading “Every parent of a son should read The Wonder of Boys”

Incentives, Education, & Religion

Hume and Smith observed that “governments who supported churches with tax dollars got a less religious populace.” In a post at Values & Capitalism, Isaac Morehouse extends that thinking to education:

When the church is publicly supported it becomes less responsive to parishioners and less creative in gaining and retaining new members. When churches had to rely solely on voluntary support, they innovated. Sermons became more interesting to the listeners, facilities were built to meet the needs of attendees, and church leaders more aggressively and creatively looked for ways to show the applicability and value of religion to everyday life. This marketing, innovation and energy resulted in greater “consumption” of religious “goods” than in countries where the state supported the church…

It’s silly to suggest that religion cannot exist without state support, and even more absurd to suggest that the federal government could improve upon religion. Yet the vast majority of Americans fail to see the same cause and effect relationship between state funding of education and the level of education among the public.

If you like the idea of a population that is competent in math, science, reading, writing, physics, philosophy, biology, history, economics and every other field of knowledge, you should oppose state support for education. Without resorting to complicated debates about curricula, teachers unions and budgets, the same economic analysis Smith and Hume used to understand the relationship between church and state can be used to understand the relationship between school and state. State support for education results in a less educated populace.

 

Richard Branson on learning and mistakes

To be read in an English accent:

When was the last time you took a risk? …Learn the art of making mistakes and learning lessons. People have a fear of failure, and while this is perfectly reasonable, it’s also very odd. It’s through making mistakes that we learn to do things. Watch a musician practice sometime. Watch a baby figure out how to walk. Skills like walking and playing music emerge gradually from a blizzard of often pretty funny mistakes. I think this is true about everything: Learning is about making mistakes and learning from them… [Making mistakes] is not failure; Failure is not giving things a go in the first place.

From the Business Stripped Bare audiobook.