Author: Rodney Marshall

15 May

Posted at 07:00h in Collegiate, K-12, News and Announcements

Imagine a curriculum customized for your own needs, merging the great works of the Western tradition, conversations, and elegant digital delivery. We at Confluence Courseware would like to help you with that. As an educator, you can: submit your manuscript and CC will deliver a beautiful courseware solution in return build on our courseware to jump start a custom solution to meet specific classroom needs have your class or school purchase access to courseware already developed for classroom use load courseware into your own LMS, the CC Repository, or CC can host individual courses for you that include student tracking tools. Explore here...

08 Aug

Posted at 07:55h in News and Announcements

Confluence Courseware, LLC seeks a classical rhetorician to join its courseware creation team. Confluence Courseware creates and distributes unique K-16 digital courseware rooted in the classics of the Western intellectual tradition that emphasizes a conversational pedagogy about the great ideas. We have a preference for a candidate with a graduate degree in rhetoric, classroom and curriculum development experience, and works of authorship already in progress. Please browse our website and catalog and contact me directly at rodney@confluencecourseware.com. Rodney J. Marshall Editor-in-Chief...

01 Jul

Posted at 07:19h in Humanities, K-12

As an educator I hope you'll find the following resource useful. At Confluence Courseware, one of our free offerings is a unique Resources and Search website. Our Humanities search uses the top 40 (and growing) reputable websites curated into a custom Google search to help students and teachers find reliable sources from the web while avoiding unnecessary clutter and sites that aren't at least peer reviewed. Visit our Humanities resource site here: http://resources.confluencecourseware.com/ I'd like to share a little bit about us as well: Confluence Courseware is a boutique digital curriculum company reviving the Western intellectual tradition by providing concierge publishing services to teachers and professors...

03 Jun

Posted at 07:00h in Collegiate, Humanities

Syntopical thinking, also known as synthesis, is the touchstone of a liberal arts education and syntopical reading is the most important type of reading in the Humanities so that we may form the most informed evaluative positions about the works that we explore. In fact, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, synthesis, evaluation and creation are usually considered among the highest level critical thinking skills that we aspire to in education. For more information, please visit Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Levels We recommend students research more on the levels of cognition and notice how analysis, synthesis, evaluation and creation are some of the higher level...

25 Feb

Posted at 06:47h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12

A liberal arts education, as a general concept, involves integrative learning—transdisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary study—through history. Such an inquisitive and broad approach to education produces well-rounded, better educated and happier, more fulfilled human beings. Many individuals throughout time, from Socrates to present, have suggested that a liberal arts education is one of the highest pursuits of humankind. In today’s world the liberal arts are usually best studied through integrative explorations in the humanities. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities: “Integrative learning is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple...

06 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Collegiate, Humanities

While human beings through time have found plenty to disagree about—politics, financial matters, family and neighborly feuds—perhaps there is no more contentious subject than religion. Though human beings through time have found plenty to disagree about—politics, financial matters, family and neighborly feuds—perhaps there is no more contentious subject than religion. Religion, understood broadly as a set of beliefs and practices meant to venerate the supernatural, is at once deeply personal and generally enacted in conjunction with a large community of fellow worshippers. Given that today the religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism account for the faiths of...

03 Dec

Posted at 13:44h in Humanities

Have you taken time to educate yourself about Islam, or are you terrified due to ignorance? I have heard intelligent people, people I once respected, say things like, "We should annihilate them," as their response to what westerners call "Islamic Terrorism." Granting the benefit of the doubt to people I know, and many I do not know, I think it is terrified response due to ignorance, or more cynically due to Orwellian tactics. Even the term "terrorism" abused over and over again by civil authorities, religious leaders, and the media belies an expectation on their part that the American population is too...

10 Nov

Posted at 15:36h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12, Training and Lifelong Learning

The metaphysical concern for the origin or, reasons for persistence of, and possibilities for eradicating evil is one of the most important discussions to have in relation to human happiness. After all, how can humans thrive and be happy if their efforts are continually sabotaged by evil? Once this question is asked, deductively we come to the even larger issue with the Great Idea of “Good and Evil”—what is “good” and what is “evil” in the first place? Furthermore, an understanding of “what is evil” and “what is good” becomes metaphysically vastly more important under monotheism. After all, if there is...

29 Oct

Posted at 11:50h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12, Training and Lifelong Learning

“When we say that something is “natural” we have certain attributes in mind. Natural speaks of purity, of goodness, of some untouched essence that is almost transcendent in its beauty and power. Inherent in this view of Nature, is that Nature is something inherent, “meant to be,” authentic while, on the other hand, that which comes from humans is artificial. So, one of the first questions to ponder as we approach the Great Idea of nature is this: Does human intervention make Nature “unnatural?” Is the Natural world, without human intervention, more pure or true? Another framework from which to view...