Thanks to the marvellous efforts of Jason Hoffman and Textdrive, comments are open again. I’ll have a bit more to say tomorrow, but in the meantime, if you’ve been meaning to say anything, here’s your chance! Remember, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
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"I do not know how he is a professor, but anyway he purports to be an economist" Senator Richard Alston, ex-Minister for Communications
"One of the elder statesmen of the Oz blogosphere" - Age Media Blog
"More intelligent than Britney Spears"Jason Soon
"The great neo-classical iconoclast"Ross Gittins
"A green activist with a totalitarian mindset", editorial, The Australian
"would argue under a pile of wet statistics and produces more copy than Xerox". Stephen Matchett in the Australian
"the odd Quiggan (sic) is good mental exercise; all part of life's rich tapestry et al."Peter Jonson
"Wrong", "incorrect", "off the mark again" Institute for Public Affairs, Institute for Private Enterprise, Centre for Independent Studies etc.
"Never wrong"Tim Blair
"A compassionate exponent of the dismal science" Stewart Fist
"An indispensable weblog"Bear Left
"Quiggin strikes me as the stereotype of an Australian - joyful, hearty, and not particularly aware of his own strength."SomeCallMeTim
"Krugman of the Antipodes"Christopher Joye
" ... his chief delight was drinking cups of coffee at odd hours" Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time
Excellent!
Although maybe working technology is finite: when your comments came back up, my blog went down.
Good news indeed. The commenters here are a great source of entertainment and illumination.
Yes comments at Crooked Timber seem to acquire more noise and less signal
As I tried to ask the other day, if a tree falls in the forest, and comments are not enabled, does it make a sound?
I shall have more serious and lengthy comments on other subjects shortly. Maybe this repair job was not an altogether constructive development!
P.S. Welcome back, Qotter.
on behalf of all illiterate boofheads can I say you beauty.
Is this the weekend forum or just a change to let off steam? I am planning to write more about education next year, especially on the state of the universities.
Below is a link to a compilation of thoughts on education by my favorite philosopher who trained as a schoolteacher and taught high school maths and science.
Extract
‘…Plato utterly confused the theory and practice of education by linking it up with his theory of leadership. The damage done is, if possible, even greater than that inflicted upon ethics by the identification of collectivism with altruism, and upon political theory by the introduction of the principle of sovereignty. Plato’s assumption that it should be the task of education (or, more precisely, of the educational institutions) to select the future leaders, and to train them for leadership, is still largely taken for granted. By burdening these institutions with a task which must go beyond the scope of any institution, Plato is partly responsible for their deplorable state’ (Open Society, I p. 127).
‘In fact, we are faced here with a fundamental difficulty for the leader principle. The very idea of selecting or (specially) educating future leaders is self-contradictory…(because) the spirit of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism; it is intellectual independence…Institutions for the selection of the outstanding can hardly be devised. …(Institutional selection) will always tend to eliminate initiative and originality, and, more generally, qualities which are unusual or unexpected…This (use of education as a selection mechanism) transforms our educational system into a race-course, and turns the course of studies into a hurdle-race. Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for inquiry, he is encouraged to study for the sake of his personal career…In other words, even in the field of science, our methods of selection are based upon an appeal to personal ambition of a somewhat crude form. (It is a natural reaction to this appeal if the eager student is looked upon with suspicion by his colleagues)’ (p. 134-35)
Popper on
education
sorry, John, I have no idea why my trackback on your converts thread is showing up here too. it’s automatic, not my intention.
Thank you for the info!