Jerry Kirkpatrick's Blog

The Ethics of Accreditation

2009-06-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Educational accreditation is unethical because it is government-initiated coercion to control the production and distribution of education. In the United States the control is indirect; in most other countries it is direct. Accreditation also infringes academic freedom, though that concept itself is a mixed product of government involvement in education.Accreditation is the process of certifying

On Extrinsic Motivation, Bureaucracy, and the Stage-Mother Syndrome

2009-05-18T07:37:00.001-07:00

Carrot and stick motivation, especially the latter, as opposed to communication, persuasion, and appeals to inner values, are alive and well in today’s world. The question is, why are such extrinsic sources of motivation so common? A number of reasons can be given.For example, in the academic world of professorial tenure, faculty can almost never be fired. As a result, some administrators and

The Epistemology of Ethics, Salesmanship, and Basket Weaving

2009-04-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

In a previous post I said that teachers are peddlers of ideas who must sell their wares as much as any other sales rep or entrepreneur. The process by which soap and ideas are sold is essentially the same. The method is persuasive communication and the purveyors of both can be honest or dishonest. There is nothing unique to the theory of salesmanship that makes sales reps more prone to dishonesty

Life in Three-Quarter Time

2009-03-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

This post is a paean to the arts, especially music, and especially the three-quarter time signature. In music, three-quarter time means that the rhythm of the music is played in a pattern of three beats to the bar, instead of the more common four, and usually with emphasis on the first. It is the rhythm of the waltz and carries with it a lilting, cheerful disposition. It is the seemingly silky

Why the World Is Not Going to Hell in a Basket

2009-02-15T12:40:00.000-08:00

One of the unfortunate diseases of older age is the tendency to pessimism or even cynicism. Nostalgia for the good old days is rampant, with complaints about how the young don’t know what we knew at their age and how they are so ill-mannered and unworldly. When generalized to the political and cultural arenas, Armageddon is said to be imminent. For advocates of capitalism and admirers of Ayn Rand

The Von Domarus Principle and the Nature of the Subconscious Mind

2009-01-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

As I state in Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism (p. 86), Freud was first to identify that we possess a dynamic, integrating subconscious mind, “dynamic” meaning continuously active and making connections whether we are awake or asleep. Thus, when we are asleep, our subconscious mind is constantly operating, connecting our many experiences of the previous day, week, or years, oftentimes

Faking Your Way Through Life

2008-12-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

When I first came up with the title for this post, I thought I should google it to see if anyone had done anything similar. Sure enough. Phony!: How I Faked My Way Through Life, a confessional memoir, was just published. I have not read the book, but the publisher’s blurbs say it is the story of a young woman who lied about not having a college degree and rose to high positions in business.

Coerced Altruism, Involuntary Servitude, and Contempt for the Less Well Off

2008-11-26T06:07:00.000-08:00

“Many people need to be coerced to do things for their own good.” This is a common refrain heard from social liberals and religious conservatives alike.National service was advocated by both presidential candidates in the recent election; young people are to be coerced to “do good for their own good.” Advocates of the military draft have always argued that it is the duty of eighteen-year-olds to

The Child As Small Adult

2008-10-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

The education literature since at least Rousseau has cautioned against viewing the child as a small adult. The meaning of the phrase, however, is not totally clear.“Small adult” usually means that children are viewed as adults in miniature, that is, as small in height and weight and weak in physical strength, but otherwise as possessing an adult brain that is merely absent content. The job of

The Two Liberalisms

2008-09-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Politics bores me. That’s why I have not written a blog on politics or on the upcoming election. Let this post suffice as my comment on today’s politics.The Democrats’ loss in 2004 led to much soul-searching to define what the Democratic brand of liberalism should be or represent. Advice given focused on the usual concretes—guns, abortion, gay rights—the kinds of issues that would excite no one

Ensuring That Disposition Trumps Situation

2008-08-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

As I argue in a previous post, independent judgment, the ability and willingness to perceive facts as facts and to respond to them regardless of what situational factors—especially, other people’s approval— may dictate, should be a fundamental aim of parenting and teaching.Independence means that one’s psychological disposition, i.e., one’s self-esteem, integrity, and courage, should be

Peddlers of Ideas

2008-07-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

Teachers are peddlers of knowledge and ideas.Well, that’s what they would be in a free market in education and that’s how they should think of themselves in today’s government-run and government-controlled system.In a free market in education teachers would be sales reps for their schools. Some might even be owner-entrepreneurs who hang out their shingles and then must recruit, i.e., sell, and

Caterpillars into Butterflies

2008-06-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

I don’t know where I’ve been for the past several decades but I had never heard the expression “turning caterpillars into butterflies” used in relation to teaching. That is, until this spring when my daughter’s softball coaches used it several times to explain their goal of coaching twelve eight-and-under girls. Add to this the coaches’ commitment to “no child left behind”—meaning every girl on

Rules vs. Principles

2008-05-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

In chapter 4 of Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism, I wrote: “Rules are commands to act or not act a certain way. Obedience may be rewarded; disobedience is certainly punished.” The context was the regulation of child and student behavior and my point was that “rules have no place in a theory of nurture.” Rules call for obedience to authority. Principles, on the other hand, teach abstract thought

Because the Stakes Are So Small

2008-04-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

In academia there is an adage that says disputes among professors are bitter precisely because the stakes are so small. The statement has been attributed to various people, including Henry Kissinger and Woodrow Wilson. In print the more general conception is known as Issawi’s law of social motion, specifically: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the

Dewey in Context

2008-03-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

In my book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism I treat favorably a number of ideas from philosopher John Dewey, which may come as a surprise to admirers of Ayn Rand. The key to understanding why I do so is to see Dewey as an Aristotelian who rejects intrinsicism without resorting to skepticism or subjectivism.During his years at Columbia University, Dewey came under the influence of Aristotelian

Postmodernism and the Next Failure of Socialism

2008-02-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

Socialism, and more broadly collectivism, as Ayn Rand pointed out, died as a moral ideal in 1945. As a practical ideal, socialism died with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet socialism and the principle that government might is required to make right is still with us. How can that be?Answer: epistemological errors of Enlightenment thinkers, specifically their failure to identify the

On Judging the Quality of Today’s Students

2008-01-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

A favorite pastime of today’s teachers, especially college professors, is the trashing of their students.“My students are terrible,” is the common complaint. “They can’t write, they can’t calculate, and they can’t think. They are woefully ignorant! They just don’t measure up to the standards of the good old days when I was a student.” And those “good old days,” depending on the age of the critic,

Sound or Independent Judgment?

2007-12-26T08:31:00.001-08:00

Sound judgment means sensible—i.e., rational or considered, not impulsive—decision making. Many parents and teachers value this process as a primary skill that children and students should possess upon reaching adulthood.In contrast, independent judgment, which presupposes sensible decision making, is not often cited as a valued goal of either education or adulthood, yet this is the personality

"It's Just Being Turned into a Business"

2007-11-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

This lament is often heard today about medicine and education, among other fields. Business, however, is the last thing medicine and education have been turned into. Bureaus of the government would be a more accurate description. Why the confusion between bureaucracy and business?The simplest answer is that most people do not understand the difference between the two. A bureaucracy, as Ludwig von

The Ethics and Epistemology of Peer Review

2007-10-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I argued that academic peer review is a gatekeeping process brought about by the post-World War II growth of government involvement in research and scholarship. Though it may control quality in a narrow, conventional sense, one significant consequence of this process is the suppression of innovation. The present post takes a look at the underlying ethics and epistemology of

Go Fish!

2007-09-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

No, not the card game. I occasionally use this phrase—he or she needs to go fish—as metaphor for what some so-called problem children in elementary schools should be allowed to do.My source for the phrase is Daniel Greenberg’s Sudbury Valley School (1, 2, 3), which is located on a ten-acre estate in Massachusetts. One of the essential features of the school is that the children, ages four to

The Dangerous Admiration of BS

2007-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Why is BS’ing admired, almost to the point of being “cuddly and warm,” as philosopher Harry Frankfurt put it, whereas lying is considered morally repugnant?Frankfurt examined BS in his 2005 monograph On Bullshit (BS) and distinguished it from lying. The liar, Frankfurt argued, is focused on facts so he or she may state the opposite, but the BS’er is an entertainer or artist who uses words and

Curiosity for Subtle Detail

2007-07-27T06:26:00.000-07:00

As a young man I accepted the wisdom of doctors and their prescriptions without question, never bothering to learn the names of the drugs they ordered. After reading Jerome Groopman’s book How Doctors Think, I am not so sure I want to go back to a doctor! The ten to fifteen percent error rate in diagnosis and similar percentage in the misreading of x-rays and MRIs does not give one confidence in

Privilege, Peer Review, and Piracy: Q & A

2007-06-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Three recent posts produced several questions and comments.Follow the Government Intervention. In “The Market Gives Privilege to No One” I stated that certain groups of professionals do not usually work weekends and that the computer industry’s “24/7” indicates the ultimate in free-market service. “But I work weekends,” protested one doctor and one professor and shock was expressed that I was