The Education of the Very Young

This was posted on the National Review weblog a few days ago.


My Wife Takes a Rather Different View [Peter Robinson]

In an eariler post I noted that, after two days in kindergarten last week, our five-year old announced that she had no intention of returning. (The mood passed.) Noticing this, Fr. George Rutler, our unofficial chaplain here on the Corner, offers his own views on the proper education of the very young.

I'd encourage your youngest one to abandon kindergarten altogether. Almost everything I learned was learned outside the classroom, and school itself interrupted my education. Moreover, school locks you in with your peers. That is a mistake. One's social circle should never include one's equals. From my earliest years I found children uninteresting and always preferred the company of adults. This was an advantage, because I got to know lots of folks who are dead now whom I never would have known if I had waited until I was an adult. - So I have a collective memory - and oral tradition - that goes back to the eighteenth century, having spoken with people who knew people who knew people who knew people who lived then.

The only real university is the universe and a city its microcosm. That is why an expression like "New York University" is foolish. New York City is the university….Instead of school, children should spend some hours each day in hotel lobbies talking to the guests. They should spend time in restaurant kitchens and shops and garages of all kinds, learning from people who actually make the world work….One day spent roaming through a real classical church building would be the equivalent of one academic term in any of our schools, and a little time spent inconspicuously in a police station would be more informative than all the hours wasted on bogus social sciences. Formal lessons would only be required for accuracy in spelling and proficiency in public speaking, for which the public speakers in our culture are not models, and in exchange for performing some menial services a child could learn the violin, harp, and piano from musicians in one of the better cocktail lounges, or from performers in the public subways….

So I urge you to keep your child out of kindergarten, because kindergarten will only lead to first grade and then the grim sequence of grade after grade begins and takes its inexorable toll on the mind born fertile but gradually numbed by the pedants who impose on the captive child the flotsam of their own infecundity.

Excellent Introduction to Gravity and LIGO

This video, Catching the Waves with LIGO (Realplayer required) is an easy introduction to gravity and the LIGO project. The video is a recording of a speech given by Dr. Barish, head of the LIGO project. Extra bonus: hear a radio pulsar!

The source page is here. You can choose versions for 56K modem, DSL/cable, or broadband.

Math flooby - podcasts and AMS Bulletins

The American Mathematical Society has posted a series of ten short podcasts summarizing some topics in volume 6 of What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences. Topics include the Poincare conjecture, digits of pi, the Navier-Stokes equation and Brownian motion.

The AMS has also made available the first hundred years of their Bulletins.

Journalism as we know it now dead

What may be my daughter's favorite news source, the Weekly World News, has been killed by its new owners. The Washington Post gives it a loving send-off.