Monthly Archives: February 2008

On American Education

I have been asked to dis­cuss exactly how it is we are edu­cated in the US. I have made my biases about “the sys­tem” clear in post­ing on vouch­ers and on higher edu­ca­tion, but I guess it is time to explain how every­thing here is sup­posed to work in case you don’t know any­thing about …

February 29, 2008 – 5:25 pm | By ashok | Posted in education | Comments (1)

A Very Public Thanks

A friend and I have now gone over together Xenophon’s Apol­ogy, sec­tions of the open­ing of The Birth of Tragedy (in Ger­man, no less!), a very large chunk of Aristotle’s Ethics bk.3 and some key sec­tions of bk 2. He has been kind enough to let me rant, and lis­ten intently, and ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tions …

February 29, 2008 – 1:29 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Comments (0)

Mmmmm…

…the one thing I can get in Dal­las that I really don’t trust Philly with is sushi, and I had plenty of that tonight. Will update more later, but y’all are free to e-mail or call (just ask for my num­ber if I haven’t given it already). I’m get­ting used to being here more, I …

February 28, 2008 – 12:54 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Comments (4)

Rant: If The Liberal Arts Are To Survive, Then People Can’t Be 6 Figures in Debt For An English Degree

To all bud­ding phil­an­thropists in Amer­ica: If you are wor­ried about things like a decline in read­ing, an inabil­ity to express one­self well ver­bally, a gen­eral lack of knowl­edge about the past or its sig­nif­i­cance, or the emer­gence of a thought­less pop­ulist pol­i­tics, then take note: You can’t expect peo­ple to ded­i­cate them­selves fully to being …

February 26, 2008 – 1:59 pm | By ashok | Posted in academia, education | Tagged | Comments (7)

An Introduction to Xenophon: Is Deliberation Possible In Politics?

Pas­sages cited are from Xenophon: The Edu­ca­tion of Cyrus, trans. Wayne Ambler. Ithaca: Cor­nell, 2001. So we know that democ­ra­cies are brought down by any ran­dom set of peo­ple with a griev­ance, and that monar­chies and oli­garchies col­lapse because of the desire for democ­racy (1.1.1). What we also know is that tyrants who can pre­serve their …

February 25, 2008 – 1:17 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics, xenophon | Comments (0)