Collegiate

01 Sep

Posted at 22:13h in Collegiate

There are many forms of government. There are aristocracies, oligarchies, monarchies, tyrannies and anarchies as just a few other models of governance over the body politic. So which is the best form of government? This is the primary question when thinking about the Great Idea of Democracy. Which form of government is the most fair, most efficient, most competent, most socially and economically just, least biased, least safe, least stable, least peaceful? These are the questions that plague anyone considering forms of governance and a logical place to begin about thinking of democracy....

27 Aug

Posted at 18:06h in Collegiate, Humanities

Once you have personally reacted to a chapter’s Great Idea of Change in the Pre-Learning Reflection and you have been exposed to some major positions from important philosophers, social scientists, artists, historians, professors, scientists, mathematicians and authors vis-à-vis the Great Idea in the Syntopical Learning Great Idea section, you will be assigned a few, short core text readings that help to further deepen your understanding of the Great Idea being explored in each chapter. ...

24 Aug

Posted at 17:17h in Collegiate, Humanities

Principle Quotations Relating to the Great Idea of Change in Introduction to the Humanities which is a Best Seller on Kobo!  “Though all society is founded on intolerance, all improvement is founded on tolerance…” - George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan “(Motion) is nothing more than the action by which any body passes from one place to another.” - Rene Descartes “Reality is mobility…only changing states exist. Rest is never more than apparent, or, rather, relative.” - Henri Bergson “Energy may be called the fundamental cause for all change in the world.” - Heraclitus” “When the change from contrary to contrary is in quantity, it is ‘growth and diminution’; when it...

21 Aug

Posted at 18:02h in Collegiate, Humanities

Change—we have been told and we often experience—is inevitable in this world. Change can be physical—material bodies on Earth change in form and space through time. Change can include the transformations, over extensive periods of time, of a species, a nation, a cultural heritage, a language or a family line. The weather changes, you age, your opinions and your appearance often change. Change can also be emotional, psychological or spiritual. Perhaps, then, the first way to consider the idea of “change” is to look at what does change in the world and what, if anything, remains the same. What, in...

13 Aug

Posted at 21:27h in Collegiate, Humanities

A course virtual text package that will serve students as a general interdisciplinary “review” of the Western religious tradition of monotheism with a focus on Jewish and Christian religious traditions with a unit on Islam as a “clash of monotheistic ideals” relevant to the contemporary world....

31 Jul

Posted at 22:15h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12

Socratic Conversation, Lecturing or Didactic teaching, and Experiential Learning Confluence Courseware guides suggest appropriate interpretive and analytic questions in order to facilitate great classroom conversations as well as prompts for academic essays and project-based learning experiences in an effort to provide a truly interdisciplinary, liberal arts education. As such, this course is organized around the principles of the Paideia method (from the Greek paidos meaning “upbringing”) which incorporates three aspects of learning: the Socratic conversation, lecturing or didactic teaching, and experiential learning. This pedagogic method focuses on building a strong foundation of basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities that can...

29 Jul

Posted at 17:28h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12, Training and Lifelong Learning

Great Conversations that Center around Great Ideas Found in Great Works 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 and evaluation are the highest level critical thinking skills that we aspire to in education. A great tool to assure a syntopical approach in this class is Mortimer Adler’s work The Great Ideas, and his collection of essays which divide Humanities education...

08 Jul

Posted at 23:10h in Collegiate, News and Announcements

What Are the Humanities? Simply put, the Humanities study human culture throughout the world from the first moment of human existence until the present. Because all of cultural history is such a vast subject, humanists often aim to study specific reoccurring themes in culture, as well as certain cultures at certain times, and to investigate representative cultural production that best captures the human spirit—those “true and beautiful” works that best make sense of who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. In “Culture and Values of the Western World,” we will focus principally on Western humanistic traditions...