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The Facts of Life
School is a great place to meet people and trade
gossip, but most people graduate before they've learned very much about
some essential subjects. Their ignorance leaves them virtually illiterate
about science, mathematics, or comparative religion in ways that have serious
consequences for their personal lives and their responsibilities as citizens.
Worse still, many students emerge from school with their heads filled with
misinformation about nature, commerce, and history. Whether through
ignorance, intellectual laziness, or more devious motives, even the best-intentioned
teachers can leave their students in the dark about some of the basic facts
of life.
Please join us four Wednesdays at noon this
spring for a crash course in everything your school-teachers left out of
your formal education, with special attention to the things you learned
that weren't true. Dare to learn what's really inside your Big Mac,
why high school textbooks systematically distort American history, and
what happens when an educated guess about astronomical distances
or compound interest isn't very well-educated. Although no diplomas
will be issued at the end of the series, every participant will look at
the world with fresh eyes that may encourage you to write to your old teachers
and set them straight.
| 19 March |
James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Taught Me
While students memorize place names, dates, and battles, argues Loewen,
they're being fed a steady diet of distortions of history whose leading
figures are invariably heroic or villainous and whose view of America is
based more closely on myth than on history. |
| 9 April |
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy
and its Consequences
How rough are your rough guesses? Without getting bogged down
in higher the minutiae of higher mathematics, Paulos shows that a lack
of understanding of fundamental mathematical concepts can have calamitous
results |
| 30 April |
Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American
Needs to Know - and Doesn't (Please note this book will be
available in March)
Although religion is the most volatile aspect of a given culture, most
Americans are not only ignorant about religion - their own as well as others
- but perfectly content with their ignorance. His prescription is
a guided tour of the world's great religions. |
| 21 May |
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of
Four Meals
What single ingredient is in one-quarter of all foods sold in a typical
supermarket? How different is organically raised food from the processed
food its consumers are avoiding? By tracing four meals back to their
roots. Pollan answers these questions and reveals what your food
was doing before you ate it. |
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