education

Regarding my previous post on the lack of accessibility of critical thinking information, even Carl Sagan’s Cosmos has this problem. Despite being hailed as supremely understandable for general audiences (both the book and the series), I found that it also posed too many challenges in its basic linguistic accessibility to …

Since “accessibility” has so many different meanings in education, let me start by clarifying that I am referring to students (and general audiences) being able to access the meaning of information they encounter. This seems to be a weak point in the skeptic, atheist, and critical thinking movements, and something …

Inexhaustive List of Jobs not Received with a Humanities PhD from a “World Class” University Assistant Professor at a University (37) One-Year Visiting Professor at a University (6) Adjunct Lecturer at a University (4) Post-doctoral Researcher at a University (5) (6)* Acquisitions Editor for a University Press Associate Editor for a …

bathroom – a room in a public place with a toilet and a sink sex – the state of being male or female as assigned at birth gender identity – a person’s internal sense of being male, female, some combination of male and female, or neither male nor female transgender …

This fall, as thousands of new students pile into colleges and universities, they will explore the many clubs and student societies on offer. Many of them will join the youth or student wings of mainstream political parties, which will be especially prominent given the upcoming election in the United States. …

Some of the most cited criticisms against Bloom’s taxonomy were written by Brenda Sugrue, PhD. She presents three main criticisms and two alternatives to Bloom. However, her criticisms are problematic. Sugrue’s first criticism is that Bloom’s taxonomy is invalid, citing that it is almost 50 years old (at the time …

It’s something that almost all teachers learn at some point in their training. But is it all it’s cracked up to be? Bloom’s taxonomy is a system of organizing educational objectives into a hierarchical model based on their complexity. The basic premise is that some kinds of learning are different …

The appeal from tradition is one of the logical fallacies that skeptics often reference. So many claims in pseudoscience rely on it, yet it is so easy to refute. People did a lot of really stupid things in the past, the fact that they did them long ago doesn’t mean …

Trigger warnings: Sexual abuse of children   As unexpectedly as a virgin giving birth I found myself in charge of teaching sex ed to 6th graders. It’s been an interesting (and sometimes depressing) experience. We don’t have any of that “Abstinence Only” crap over here and while the parents were …

I often find myself needing to oversimplify things. As much as a hate the idea of oversimplification (for example, many of the problems with homophobia in society are related to an oversimplification of human sexuality) I do need to do it regularly. In the context of education, this makes sense. …