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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
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Stories and literature

Do liberal arts liberate?

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life

Nick Romeo

Many figures in traditional dress are gathered beneath a structure from which hang paper lists. In the foreground are horses. The colours are muted with age
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Education

The exam that broke society

Keju, China’s incredibly difficult civil service test, strengthened the state at the cost of freedom and creativity

Yasheng Huang

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Thinkers and theories

Wittgenstein in the classroom

The philosopher understood that learning – of a concept, of ourselves, of each other – is the undertaking of a whole life

Calum Jacobs

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Human rights and justice

Do not forget them

Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard

Steve Minton

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Education

Unschooling

It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts

Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel

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Education

Hitozukuri

Japan’s Cold War education policy used religion to ‘make’ the ideal humans needed by its nascent economy. Did it work?

Jolyon Baraka Thomas

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Teaching and learning

Learning styles don’t exist

A teaching approach that is based on students’ preferences sounds laudable. But this misunderstands how learning happens

Carl Hendrick

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Philosophy of mind

Philosophy’s blindspot

Education has long been ignored by contemporary philosophers. That is a myopic view that must change

David Bakhurst

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Self-improvement

Many wisdoms

There are no transcendent insights that rise above human difference. Yet wisdom exists if we look in the right places

Avram Alpert

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History of ideas

Views from everywhere

Academic philosophy can indeed make sense of our interdependent world. But only if it transforms by becoming truly diverse

Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach & Leah Kalmanson

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Stories and literature

Great books are still great

Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies

Roosevelt Montás

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Animals and humans

An unflinching look at a provocative public dissection of a ‘surplus’ zoo lion

13 minutes

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Education

Sex on the curriculum

Sex education is a battlefield over morals and young bodies, and has exposed fractures in American life for over a century

Kristy Slominski

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Education

Jefferson’s university

Thomas Jefferson founded a university believing it would safeguard republican freedom. Slavery was another matter altogether

Alan Taylor

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Childhood and adolescence

We’re all teenagers now

Adolescence isn’t a time of life so much as a frame of mind. Liberating yet damaging, it’s transformed the US and the world

Paul Howe

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Film and visual culture

Shoddy filmmaking meets the miracle of life in a police training film turned cult classic

11 minutes

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Thinkers and theories

Pause. Reflect. Think

Susan Stebbing’s little Pelican book on philosophy had a big aim: giving everybody tools to think clearly for themselves

Peter West

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Cognition and intelligence

How to be a genius

I travelled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people

Craig Wright

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Global history

The American Museum of Natural History grapples with its most controversial piece

16 minutes

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Education

Education, unchained

Rousseau’s child-centred ideals are now commonplace but his truly radical vision of educational freedom still eludes us

James Brooke-Smith

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Rituals and celebrations

We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic

Antone Martinho-Truswell

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Teaching and learning

I was homeschooled for eight years: here’s what I recommend

Mordechai Levy-Eichel

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Education

The scholar’s vocation

A century ago, Weber both diagnosed the ills of the corporatised, modern university, and pointed out the path beyond it

Chad Wellmon

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Education

Why lifelong learning is the international passport to success

Pierre Vandergheynst & Isabelle Vonèche Cardia