great ideas Tag

06 Jun

Posted at 07:00h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12

A great tool to assure a syntopical approach to learning is Mortimer Adler's work The Great Ideas, and his collection of essays which divide Humanities education into the pursuit of understanding 102 Great Ideas. For more information please visit: The Center for the Study of the Great Ideas The Great Books Foundation Paideia Active Learning Center We suggest students research more on these websites concerning the “Great Ideas,” Mortimer Adler, “paideia learning” strategies and why a philosophical approach is for everyone.  These sites also give a general overview of the importance of a liberal arts education for all. In his academic career, Mortimer...

08 Mar

Posted at 07:16h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12

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. Instructions:  Please research more on the levels of cognition.  Please respect the copyright and terms of use displayed on the webpage above. A great tool...

01 Mar

Posted at 09:29h in Collegiate, Humanities, K-12

We live in a hyper-connected age; ours is a technology saturated society of instantaneous messaging, vast networks of streaming information and a deluge of images that give a vertiginous tinge to life and leave an overwhelming sense of relentless acceleration.  Yet, for all of the allure of our digital devices and the promise of continual connectivity, something is missing.  Since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, when the hope of a machine-aided utopia first took root, idealists and inventors alike have promised that technological advances would bring productivity and efficiency to the workplace, automation of distasteful, burdensome tasks and an...

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...

15 Sep

Posted at 21:52h in Collegiate, Humanities

The fourth section in the Syntopical Course Guide for each of the interrelated Great Ideas is Online Research. After your initial reaction to the Great Idea, your formal introduction to and readings concerning the Great Idea, you will now be asked to do a small amount of online research as it relates to great works that comment or expand upon the Great Idea....

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...