Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: childhood

  • Childhood with Aba

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ It’s been several months, now, since my father – “Aba” – died, and the memory of these last, difficult years has receded just enough for some of the earlier, happier ones to begin to re-emerge.  The last thing I worked with him on was Start-Ups, a book about his life…

  • The Ethics of Compulsory Education — And Public Schooling Too — With Crispin Sartwell

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson College) returns to Sophia to talk about the issues he has with compulsory, state-sponsored k-12 education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYm03FISkM4&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 10:50 – Crispin’s schooling experience in Washington DC 20:20 – The tension between learning and compulsion / Formal Compulsion and oppressive atmospheres 25:50 – Compulsion of minors considered more generally…

  • A Few Reflections on Name-Calling, Parody and Satire

    by Mark English The bluntness and ruthlessness of childhood interactions is well known and name-calling is a favorite ploy in childish struggles for social dominance. Such behavioral patterns persist – albeit usually in muted or more subtle forms – in adult contexts. The field of politics can be relied upon not only to exert a…

  • Self-Discovery and Political Opinion

    by Mark English How do we come to have the political views we have? Genetics (and, more broadly, biology) plays a part, but only, I think, to the extent that genetics/biology contributes to determining broad psychological characteristics, relating to personality type for example. The main contributing factors are no doubt socio-cultural and relate to one’s…