The Nose: Big Ideas, The End Of Playtime, And Winners & Losers In Walkouts
Today's panelists are in-studio and in-traffic!
For The Nose, we try to round up a posse of ideas that reflect the serious and playful sides of the week in culture. And culture has been unbusually giving this week. We're just getting to know Rick Perry, a guy who has already (kind of) threatened the Fed Chief, said there are some gaps in the theory or evolution, declared climate change and a non-issue and, well, he's just getting warmed up.
Some of us were intrigued by Neil Gabler's New York Times essay declaring this a "post-ideas" era, in which there are no new Big Ideas in the pipeline to replace the Big Bang, the feminine mystique, relativity, the end of history and the Death of God -- former celebrity ideas, if you will.
In last Sunday's Courant, an op-ed piece on the elimination of play from kindergarten got our panelists thinking about the importance of play all through life.
Anderson Cooper cracked up over a stupid joke on CNN and Abercrombie and Fitch told The Situation... Well, you'll have to listen.
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
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Comments
to play or not to play--a straw man issue
Please see my blog piece "Where Do All the Children Play? Not in Kindergarten, says the Reporter; but I Say Wrong Turn! Recalculate, Recalculate!" written in response to that Courant Article. (I do think the author of the article and some of the NOSE panel need to visit classrooms in high poverty areas that work. I've got some. The test issue is a red herring.
http://desperatehousescribes.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/where-do-the-child...
Patty Pickard
Love this show!
The rejection of absolutes
The rejection of absolutes was always a self-destroying artifact. The grand negations of absolutes from Marx to Heidegger to Derrida is somewhat played out to a vapid individualism driven by consumerism. Yes. Andy Warhol had it right with his 15 minutes of viral reality show and social networking fame and Campbell's Soup cans are indeed Pop Art.
A film like "2001:A Space Odyssey" and its implied consent of Intelligent Design couldn't be written about in the Ivy League or New England today. A conversation about intelligent design and bigotry--which group is more small-minded and loaded with entrenched bigotry and closed mindedness and small-minded ideas -- North East educators or Texan churchgoers -- would be impossible on WNPR in Hartford.
Asking unionized teachers who live for tenure to be creative and innovative and introduce play and career adaptability? C'mon man. What are you? Mad?
Get into the "hold them back a year" movement for young men in the hands of women in preschool to Grade 2. The chaos they represent is classified as immaturity because they learn early to challenge the prim and proper disciplinarian types and put play over ordered learning. The play instinct is crushed.
Lews Black needs to get on this subject and investigate.
Email from Jack:
I was surprised that no one mentioned Bill O'Reilly's walk-off from Terry Gross's show a few years back. She used the incident in an NPR promo for years afterward (I don't recall whether the promo was for Fresh Air or for fund-raising campaigns). You can hear her discussing it with Scott Simon here -http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3925277 - toward the end. In justifying his departure by saying that he had come on the show only to talk about his book, he sounded a lot like Christine O'Donnell.
Speaking of books, did anyone mention Homo ludens by Johan Huizinga? It's about the role of play in shaping culture. I missed the first half of the show and heard only part of the discussion about play, so perhaps it came up earlier. If not, your guests interested in the topic might enjoy this book.
Email from Alexis:
I was listening to your show today and had a question about Emotional Intelligence. I thought the few teachers who commented were interesting but would love to hear what you all have to say about the measurement of and teaching to Emotional Intelligence (New Haven project), especially among low income children.
Thank you for providing a fantastic show!
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