I just spent the last half hour being subjected to a group of teachers and aides running their mouths about nonsense, complete with street talk and cursing. Aside from the fact that they are totally unprofessional and should probably not be working in a school at all, it made me realize something about the education system.

I’ve long advocated adding moral education to classrooms so that students could learn how to live as peaceful citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation (or lack thereof). But that will never happen as long as the teachers themselves are morally bankrupt and corruption is rampant. They are the role models for the next generation, and the future is looking more and more bleak everyday.

Has anyone else noticed that Amazon.com isn’t so great at stocking the books you need anymore? On two occasions recently, I’ve gone to Barnes and Noble (and other stores) because they had books that Amazon.com wasn’t carrying (or had significant delays in ordering).

On the other hand, I just bought this wonderful $18 wet/dry cordless vacuum cleaner from Amazon.com. Go figure.

Many teachers grow timid when one suggests to them that they should
engage their students in higher level thinking. I try, as often
as possible, to ask the difficult questions to my students, to
challenge them, and to encourage them to think outside of the
box. So, why do so many adults think that you are confusing
children or being too hard on them if you make them think critically
instead of simply replaying what they’ve been told verbatim?

My only conclusion is that these adults, themselves, have long since
given up higher level thinking. They are content with the
mundane. Thinking takes too much work and too much time away from
the simple pleasures of ignorance. They never question
anything. I’m sure they did at one time, but there was probably
an adult over them who crushed any dreams of intellectual maturation
and forced them into dormancy.

For that I can say that most Americans do not think deeply and never
ponder their own realities. Why are we happy with mythology
(particularly Greek Mythology) but afraid of philosophy? Is it
because mythology is pretend and philosophy is real? Is it
because philosophy challenges you to think and mythology helps you
forget reality?Â

What I’ve found is that when a teacher starts to ask the deeper
questions, students get more involved. They don’t want to sit
around and recite dates of historical events while ignoring the
significance of them. They don’t want to be told a particular war
was beneficial to America or the world and not be allowed to decide for
themselves whether or not it was beneficial. And what of free
thought and free expression?

Challenge your students and encourage them to question everything, even you.

At least for now, Google has halted its master plan to scan millions
of books into its database with intentions of allowing people to search them
using its mega-search-engine. Now that their 1-billion-page-dash
has been temporarily halted, we have time to pause for reflection.

Publishing companies threw a fit at the prospect of Google throwing
their copyrighted works out to the wolves. Â At first glance, I
would tend to side with Google. After all, free as in freedom, right? Copyleft,
right? Why should access to books be a luxury of the
rich? Oh wait, isn’t that why we have libraries? So, Google
is just a big electronic library, right? Well, not exactly.

Yes, Google allows a person to find information and so does a library,
but that is where the similarity ends. Google might look like a
library, but it is no ibiblio (http://www.ibiblio.org);
trust me. Google is a business, a for-profit corporation setting
out to make billions of dollars through its investments.

It goes against the very nature of libraries. No matter what
Google’s pure intentions might appear to be, their ultimate goal at
the end of the day is profit. If they were a non-profit org,
perhaps I’d have a little more sympathy and would feel more eager to
apply the hey it’s just a big cybrary analogy. As it stands,
however, I am more than a little skeptical. I hope this doesn’t
affect my search engine ranking.