Philolog

The Philosophical Stages project is featured in the January/February 2007 issue of Edutopia, the award-winning, national multimedia publication of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) designed to celebrate and profile the stories and people behind innovation in education. GLEF is a nonprofit operating foundation that documents, advocates, and disseminates information about exemplary programs in K-12 education in order to help these practices spread nationwide.

Edutopia identifies the Philosophical Stages project as an exciting landmark in an ideal educational landscape, and explains how and why it is important that Philosophical Stages brings a new P to PBL.

(1) "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" and
(2) "How To: Use Performance-Based Learning in the Classroom"

Continue reading "Acting Up: Higher philosophical thinking through drama" »

Posted by James Collins at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818), Caspar David Friedrich

Romanticism in art, as in literature, followed the pendulum swing away from the optimistic Enlightenment idea of human dominion over nature and the credo that Reason would ultimately reign supreme. Revolutionary and chaotic, emotional rather than rational, often psychologically introverted, the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") movement in Germany - emphasizing subjectivity and unease - and its offspring the Romantic movement abhorred the 18th century's orderly imposition on nature and the designs of squared parterre tidy gardens with orthogonal lines of pollarded trees. Instead Romanticism preferred the vast wildernesses of an indifferent and unpredictable nature with its endless forests, towering clouds and deafening waterfalls from icy giant peaks. Beginning in 1774, Goethe's Werther wept with newfound emotion in a landscape overflowing with undammed sentiment paralleled by swollen rivers and unmanageable floods of the world at large. Honesty about feelings were now more important in speech than wit and répartée; being and behaving genuine more important than artifice. Themes such as liberation, mysticism, exotic orientalism, human insignificance and a darker psychology ran counter to the eurocentric Age of Reason. Poems and paintings alike found the moon and dreams more interesting than the sun and conscious thought. Hermit shrines in the woods brought the artists closer to God than hollow liturgies in cathedrals of crowded cities darkened by coal smoke and religious hypocrisy, as Blake uttered like an Old Testament prophet in poetry:

"How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals..."

Continue reading "Goya, Friedrich and Romanticism: Reification of Nature" »

Posted by Patrick Hunt at 7:30 PM | Permalink