Friday, March 25, 2011

thought-provoking writing

"The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.

Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry--is not even a "subject"--but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning."
Neil Postman (The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School)

"Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)"
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)

"Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)"
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)

"Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose."
Neil Postman (Teaching as a Subversive Activity)


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