Castle Rock Institute Blog

The Pernicious Character of Habit

2007-01-15T09:33:00.000-05:00

We talked about this a lot, the anti-educational nature of habits and assumptions, but this article by Adrian Savage is an excellent piece. It's entitled "How to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone," and it really is a "how to" as well as a "why" approach to this idea. Here's a brief excerpt.Over time, we all gather a set of constricting habits around us—ones that trap us in a zone of supposed

What does it mean to be "educated?"

2007-01-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

A very nice article speaking directly to this core issue of CRI. It's "Liberal Education, Then and Now" by Peter Berkowitz, and you can find it in the newest issue of Policy Review, or here.He finds that John Stuart Mill's notion of "many-sidedness" to be the key concept, and that "the highest justification of liberal education is that by forming free and well-furnished minds it prepares

Learn and be "Interesting"

2006-11-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

I've never been a huge fan of the word "interesting" (too vague), but this post over at lifehack.org, "How to be Interesting," seemed to resonate nicely with something that drives CRI. The wrap-up distills it:The similarity of all those ways are to increase your scope of thinking and knowledge, by jumping out from your comfort zone of knowledge.Putting it slightly differently, being interesting

Barefoot Hiking

2006-10-19T17:01:00.000-04:00

A great post about barefoot hiking over at Cool Tools. A wonderful account of what's added. Highly recommended!

New Blog at RBC

2006-08-04T17:58:00.000-04:00

Our friends over at Rockbrook Summer Camp have a new blog. It's news and info about camp and such.It's here: Girls Summer Camp.

Two More from Coffin

2006-05-20T07:45:00.000-04:00

I couldn't resist these..."To love effectively, we must act collectively.""Love measures our stature: the more we love the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself."Both from William Sloane Coffin Jr.

William Sloane Coffin

2006-04-13T09:26:00.000-04:00

Our friend and supporter, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, has died at his home in Strafford, Vt. He was 81. A well-known civil rights and peace activist, Dr. Coffin served as the Chaplin at Yale during the Vietnam war. He was an insightful thinker, preacher and writer, a welcome observer of American social practices.Dr. Coffin was good friends with our Literature professor John Gardner and often

New Zealand Campsite

2006-04-07T09:33:00.000-04:00

Here's an early morning view of one place we camped in Abel Tasman. Very Cool.

Environmental Consequences

2006-03-30T08:59:00.000-05:00

A quick plug for PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, an environmental organization dedicated to exploring how markets can address environmental issues and improve environmental policy. The March 2006 issue of their magazine, "PERC Reports," includes a striking article by Daniel Benjamin about how companies with poor environmental records are rarely penalized by their customers.

In Praise of Imagination

2006-03-25T14:58:00.000-05:00

The April 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine presents "The Spirit of Disobedience: An Invitation to Resistance," by Curtis White. It's a thoughtful piece about America suffering from the interplay between opposing values and assumptions, between unyielding allegiance to "Reason," on the one hand, or "Revelation" on the other. We see this writ large today in the debates between "Christian

A Community of Wanderers

2006-03-17T08:54:00.000-05:00

A nice note from former student Kate Hove arrive recently. In it she quotes Bruce Feiler, saying she was reminded of her time at Castle Rock."Perhaps the primary site to encounter the divine is in a place of personal vulnerability, exposed to extreme conditions, surrounded by a community of wanderers, open to the promise of a better, more moral world."A community of mutually engaged learners,

Hiking in the Heat

2006-03-09T10:27:00.000-05:00

A great day in Western Australia for day hiking. Here we're near Gantheaume Point, Broome.

Teaching and Spirituality

2006-03-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

A recent survey of American college and university professors' attitudes towards religion found that "more than 80 percent of faculty members consider themselves spiritual at least to some extent, and a majority of faculty members consider themselves religious to some extent, and pray to some extent." Here is a summary of the results.One of the more interesting conclusions came when the study

Failure and learning

2006-02-23T11:10:00.000-05:00

Kimberley Patton gave good advice to students graduating from Harvard Divinity School last June."Failure is how one learns; indeed, it is the most important element of the natural process of learning. And entering new territory one does not already 'control,' without a passport, is how one keeps moving outward from the known center, how one avoids calcification, how inquiry and wonder are not

Wendell Berry on Community

2006-02-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

"If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking of a community that is merely human. We are talking about a neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil, its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it. If the place is well preserved, if its entire membership, natural and human, is present in it, and if the human

Studying Abroad in New Zealand

2006-02-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } A nice memory of our recent outing on the South Island of New Zealand.You can see it was a great day.

Will the University Survive ?

2006-01-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

The other day I came across this article by Tim Swanson about the future of Higher Education. It has a lot to do with the economic inefficiencies of colleges and universities and how ultimately many will be forced to make significant changes, but I appreciated its attention to what's truly important about post-secondary education.It's not a "get rich quick" scheme, does not lead to clear job

Dave Foreman on "Environment"

2006-01-12T11:02:00.000-05:00

Earth First! cofounder, and founder of the Wildlands Project, Dave Foreman writes:"I hate the word 'environment.' You can love a forest. You can love a mountain. You can love a plant. But how can you love an abstract concept?"And when asked when he is the happiest, he responds,"When I'm not thinking abstractly. When I am being fully an animal, when I'm in the middle of a rapid on the river and

Learning Theory

2006-01-05T09:52:00.000-05:00

Kathy Sierra, over at Creating Passionate Users, has posted a summary of her take on learning theory. It's a series of descriptive, prescriptive, and axiomatic statements about learning/teaching. For anyone concerned about what it means to learn and hence how to teach effectively (and I would argue that is, or should be, all of us!), it's a valuable read. Here's a direct link to the

Boab Tree

2005-12-29T15:53:00.000-05:00

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } A rather famous boab tree in Derby, Western Australia.

Cold Mountain

2005-12-20T10:39:00.000-05:00

It's such a wonderful clear day today here in North Carolina, I thought I would pass along a view of Cold Mountain up in the Pisgah National Forest. Here's a webcam that shows the current view.Also, here is some verse from late 8th Century, Taoist-Chan poet, Han-Shan. He lived and wrote in the far eastern mountains of China and is well-known for his collection of "Cold Mountain Poems."

Improvising Knowledge

2005-12-14T11:31:00.000-05:00

"Tell people something they know already, and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new, and they will hate you for it."Environmentalist, philosopher, writer, George Monbiot has this quote as a tagline to his blog. It's the kind of quote that, while perhaps overstated ('hate' might be an extreme generalization), still rings true. For me, the quote describes a common critically flawed

William Wordsworth on Nature

2005-12-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

"One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach you more of man,Of moral evil and of good,Than all the sages can.""After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on— have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear— what remains? Nature remains."Two quotes from Wordsworth to remind us of Nature, to help us pause in our ordinary pursuits and recall

Kayaking, Broome, Australia

2005-11-21T15:18:00.000-05:00

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } A warm day for kayaking in the Roebuck Bay near Broome, WA.

How to Reinvent Higher Education

2005-11-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

This is "College Week" over at Slate.com. They've got several short articles on higher education reform, the debate over what constitutes a quality education, and much more. In one series of articles, several professors write how they might use a "magic wand" to reinvent undergraduate education. The answers are varied and interesting.Here's just a brief sample from S. Georgia Nugent, the