Meditation is Replacing Detention in Baltimore’s Public Schools, and the Students Are Thriving

in Education, Health, K-12 | January 4th, 2017

By now, most peo­ple are famil­iar with the term “school-to-prison pipeline,” the descrip­tion of a sys­tem that fun­nels trou­bled stu­dents through dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gram after pro­gram. Deten­tions, sus­pen­sions, and often expul­sions fur­ther aggra­vate many stu­dents’ already dif­fi­cult lives, and send them “back to the ori­gin of their angst and unhappiness—their home envi­ron­ments or their neigh­bor­hoods,” writes Car­la Amu­rao for PBS’ Tavis Smi­ley Reports. Harsh dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies don’t actu­al­ly change behav­ior, and “sta­tis­tics reflect that these poli­cies dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get stu­dents of col­or and those with a his­to­ry of abuse, neglect, pover­ty or learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.”

In short, stu­dents come to school with sig­nif­i­cant stress­es and set­backs, and are them­selves treat­ed as prob­lems to be quar­an­tined or forced out. But why not instead teach those students—why not teach all students—effective means of cop­ing with stress and set­backs? I can think of almost no more use­ful a set of skills to car­ry into adult­hood, or into a trou­bled home or neigh­bor­hood sit­u­a­tion. As the CBS This Morn­ing seg­ment above reports, one school in Bal­ti­more is attempt­ing to so equip their stu­dents, with a yoga and med­i­ta­tion pro­gram dur­ing and after school that takes the place of deten­tion and oth­er pun­ish­ments.

The Robert W. Cole­man Ele­men­tary School adopt­ed a twice-a-day yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice dur­ing school hours for all stu­dents, called “Mind­ful Moments”; and an after-school pro­gram called Holis­tic Me, which “hosts 120 male and female stu­dents,” writes Newsweek, “and involves yoga, breath­ing exer­cis­es and med­i­ta­tive activ­i­ties. Dis­rup­tive stu­dents are brought to the Mind­ful Moment Room for breath­ing prac­tices and dis­cus­sion with a coun­selor and are instruct­ed on how to man­age their emo­tions.” As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed on this site, these kinds of activ­i­ties have been shown in research stud­ies to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce stress, anx­i­ety, and depres­sion and to improve con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry.

In the Holis­tic Me pro­gram at Cole­man, “which focus­es on prekinder­gar­den through fifth-grade stu­dents,” admin­is­tra­tors already noticed a dif­fer­ence in the first year. “Instead of the stu­dents fight­ing or lash­ing out,” says prin­ci­pal Carlil­lian Thomp­son in the video above, they start­ed to use words to solve their prob­lems.” None of the stu­dents in the pro­gram have received sus­pen­sions or deten­tions, and many have become lead­ers and high achiev­ers. The pro­gram was found­ed in 2001 by broth­ers Atman and Ali Smith and their friend Andres Gon­za­lez, all Bal­ti­more locals. In the past 15 years, their Holis­tic Life Foun­da­tion and its part­ners have offered a vari­ety of enrich­ment activ­i­ties but focused pri­mar­i­ly on yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tices.

Using these tech­niques, stu­dents learn to resolve con­flicts peace­ful­ly and to reduce the amount of emo­tion­al tur­moil in their lives. Rather than fur­ther alien­at­ing or trau­ma­tiz­ing already stressed-out kids, this kind of inter­ven­tion pre­pares them for aca­d­e­m­ic and social resilience. The foun­da­tion has rapid­ly expand­ed since 2015, receiv­ing fed­er­al fund­ing and deliv­er­ing pro­grams to Char­lottesville, Min­neapo­lis, Madi­son, and abroad. It may not have changed the course of “school-to-prison pipeline” poli­cies just yet, but it has shown a con­struc­tive way for­ward for oth­er schools like Baltimore’s Pat­ter­son High, which has adopt­ed a 15-minute yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice at the begin­ning and end of each day for every one of its stu­dents.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Learn Islamic & Indian Philosophy with 107 Episodes of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps Podcast

in Philosophy | January 4th, 2017

We post copi­ous resources for the study of phi­los­o­phy on this site, such that you can obtain a full col­lege-lev­el sur­vey under­stand­ing of the sub­ject on your own by tak­ing the many free class­es, lis­ten­ing to the many free lec­tures and pod­casts, and read­ing the many free texts, ebooks and com­men­taries you’ll find here. But sev­er­al of our posts have met with a sim­i­lar read­er objec­tion: where is the East­ern phi­los­o­phy?

The ques­tion could also be put to almost any aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ment of phi­los­o­phy. One answer I’ve often heard dis­miss­es it alto­geth­er. Phi­los­o­phy, some say, devel­oped in the West, first in ancient Greece, then in Rome, the suc­ceed­ing Chris­t­ian empire, and the sec­u­lar age that fol­lowed. It is a Euro­pean pur­suit and tra­di­tion. Oth­er cul­tur­al­ly par­tial crit­ics, who wish to appear enlight­ened, are will­ing to con­cede that “the world’s Mus­lims,” as Richard Dawkins tweet­ed a few years back, “did great things in the Mid­dle Ages,” at least pro­vid­ing a crit­i­cal bridge between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Scholas­ti­cism.

Islam­ic philoso­phers like Avi­cen­na and Aver­roes kept in dia­logue with the Greeks after Europe had for­got­ten them, and pre­served the only work of Aris­to­tle we have. But that was then. What have they done for us late­ly? Atti­tudes like this, argues phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Peter Adam­son, are prej­u­dices with lit­tle basis in fact, and part of the rea­son for a dearth of high-qual­i­ty, acces­si­ble East­ern phi­los­o­phy resources in Eng­lish. Adam­son, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the study of phi­los­o­phy online with his pod­cast, His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, fills in the gap with his series on Islam­ic and Indi­an phi­los­o­phy in sev­er­al parts.

For­ma­tive Peri­od—25 episodes

Phi­los­o­phy in Andalu­sia—25 episodes

East­ern Tra­di­tions—25 episodes

Begin­ning with phi­los­o­phy in the Islam­ic world in Episode 171, “East­ern Tra­di­tions,” at the top, Adam­son cov­ers “influ­en­tial thinkers of the twelfth cen­tu­ry like Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Suhrawardī, focus­ing on their lega­cy in the East­ern realms of cen­tral Asia and Per­sia, mov­ing on to the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, and end­ing with devel­op­ments in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry phi­los­o­phy.” Against dis­mis­sive claims like Dawkins’ that these cen­turies were “a time of intel­lec­tu­al and sci­en­tif­ic decline in Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion,” Adam­son argues they were “in fact a time of remark­able achieve­ment in fields like log­ic and astron­o­my as well as the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines of phi­los­o­phy.” See all three parts of the Islam­ic Phi­los­o­phy series above.

Adam­son shares the intro­duc­tion to Indi­an phi­los­o­phy, just above, with NYU’s Jonar­don Ganeri, and the two lay out a case for the tra­di­tion as “pri­mar­i­ly a way of life and search for the high­est good.” As usu­al, Adam­son brings on guest schol­ars and pro­vides a list for fur­ther read­ing on the podcast’s site. And as usu­al, his his­tor­i­cal frame­works are rig­or­ous and very well-researched. This series breaks into two main cat­e­gories (below). The sec­ond part of the series focus­es on the devel­op­ment of a for­mal tra­di­tion, the “sūtra (lit­er­al­ly ‘thread’)… a genre of writ­ing in which ideas were set forth in brief, apho­ris­tic form. Var­i­ous sūtras were tak­en as author­i­ta­tive and foun­da­tion­al for numer­ous schools of Indi­an thought, which devot­ed fur­ther com­men­taries to the sūtras.”

Ori­gins—17 episodes

Age of Sutra—15 episodes

As he has done with many of his oth­er series, Adam­son has adapt­ed the Islam­ic Phi­los­o­phy pod­casts in book form, Phi­los­o­phy in the Islam­ic World: A his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy with­out any gaps, Vol­ume 3. His even-hand­ed­ness and eru­di­tion make this series a joy to lis­ten to, though he’d also encour­age us to read the philoso­phers he dis­cuss­es, if pos­si­ble. If you’re new to read­ing phi­los­o­phy, or to Adamson’s pod­cast, you’d do well to read his recent­ly post­ed All 20 ‘Rules for His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy,’ which he has brought togeth­er in one place as “guide­lines encap­su­lat­ing what I see as good prac­tice in study­ing the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy.” (Rule 8: “Read the whole text.”)

Many of these guide­lines rub up against the cur­rent ortho­dox­ies, assump­tions and, frankly, snob­beries of some con­tem­po­rary aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy. Among these, “Rule 14: Take reli­gion seri­ous­ly” and “Rule 15: Be broad­mind­ed about what counts as ‘phi­los­o­phy.’” And for those who not only dis­miss but also embrace entire cul­tures’ philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions for one defin­ing reason—Indian thought is “spir­i­tu­al” or “non-vio­lent”; Islam­ic thought is “tol­er­ant” or “intolerant”—Adamson offers Rule 18: “don’t essen­tial­ize.” As becomes clear on even a cur­so­ry lis­ten to the pod­casts in these series, what we tend to believe about “non-west­ern” phi­los­o­phy oper­ates far in excess of what most of us actu­al­ly know about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times 

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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200,000 Photos from the George Eastman Museum, the World’s Oldest Photography Collection, Now Available Online

in Photography | January 3rd, 2017

stravinsky-1921

There was a time when any­one with even the remotest inter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy knew the name East­man, if not the life and work of George East­man him­self. East­man Kodak—the com­pa­ny found­ed in 1888 by that entre­pre­neur, phil­an­thropist, and Great Amer­i­can Suc­cess Story—once held a dom­i­nant share of the cam­era and film mar­ket. Gen­er­al­ly known in lat­er decades just by the name “Kodak,” Eastman’s com­pa­ny seems to have near­ly dis­ap­peared from the mar­ket in the dig­i­tal age (though it may be poised for a come­back).

first-kodak-manual

Yet many of the devices and mate­ri­als East­man’s com­pa­ny invent­ed saw dai­ly use in film and pho­tog­ra­phy through­out all of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry. East­man bought the patents for and man­u­fac­tured the first roll film, indis­pens­able in both indus­tries until recent­ly. (He has two stars on the Hol­ly­wood walk of fame for his tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions.) With the ease of roll film, Eastman’s com­pa­ny also cre­at­ed and sold the first cam­era for con­sumer use in 1888, sim­ply called the Kodak.

“The cam­era was a great suc­cess,” writes a Kodak his­to­ry, “and many peo­ple, among them a lot of women, start­ed tak­ing pho­tographs. When the 100 pic­tures of the film were shot, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er could mail the cam­era to East­man Kodak, where all the tech­ni­cal work would be done by skilled peo­ple.”

hauron-self-portrait

Eastman’s lega­cy lives on in anoth­er impor­tant capac­i­ty as well: since the 40s, his Rochester, NY man­sion housed one of the largest, the old­est, and per­haps the most impres­sive col­lec­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy in the world, the East­man Muse­um. “In 1989,” the muse­um tells us, it “com­plet­ed con­struc­tion of a 73,000-square-foot build­ing (more than 70 per­cent of which is below ground lev­el) that includ­ed cli­mate-con­trolled col­lec­tion vaults, exhi­bi­tion gal­leries, libraries, offices, and pho­to­graph­ic con­ser­va­tion and film preser­va­tions labs.” And now, over a quar­ter of a mil­lion of the East­man Museum’s hold­ings are avail­able online in search­able gal­leries of “thou­sands of pho­tographs that date back to the medium’s ear­li­est years,” notes Claire Voon at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “as well as “objects from its mas­sive library of arti­facts that togeth­er chron­i­cle the his­to­ry of image-mak­ing.”

no-soap

You’ll find the 1921 por­trait of Igor Stravin­sky, at the top, and the front cov­er of an 1888 Kodak man­u­al (“Part First”), below it. You’ll see exper­i­men­tal odd­i­ties like the 1889 “Self-Por­trait ‘Trans­for­ma­tion’” by Louis Docos du Hau­ron, fur­ther up; and strik­ing por­traits like Lewis W. Hine’s “No Soap, Pitts­burgh Steel Work­er Child 1909,” above. “The muse­um holds the col­lec­tions of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre,” writes Voon, “Lewis Hine, Alvin Lang­don Coburn, Nick­o­las Muray, and Edward Ste­ichen, so their works are avail­able here for you to eas­i­ly browse.” You’ll sure­ly rec­og­nize at least one of those names. Before East­man, Daguerre became one of the fathers of pho­tog­ra­phy in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry. Just below, see an 1844 por­trait of the artist and inven­tor by a con­tem­po­rary, Jean Bap­tiste Sabati­er-Blot, “among the most famous por­traitists of the Parisian daguerreo­type of the 1840s,” as Mono­skop describes him.

daguerre-portrait

“Objects from the museum’s pho­tog­ra­phy, tech­nol­o­gy and George East­man Lega­cy col­lec­tions are now search­able,” the East­man Muse­um writes in its press release, “and more objects from the museum’s vast hold­ings are being added on an ongo­ing basis.” And, to hon­or Eastman’s con­sid­er­able lega­cy in motion pic­tures, “objects from the mov­ing image col­lec­tion will become acces­si­ble in the com­ing months.” For now, we can see work by pio­neer­ing Eng­lish pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ead­weard Muy­bridge, who began con­duct­ing motion stud­ies in the 1870s, which con­tributed to the devel­op­ment of Eastman’s film and Thomas Edison’s cam­eras. See Muy­bridge’s 1877 “Man in der­by rid­ing horse” below, and enter the online East­man Muse­um col­lec­tion here.

muybridge-man-in-derby

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ead­weard Muybridge’s Motion Pho­tog­ra­phy Exper­i­ments from the 1870s Pre­sent­ed in 93 Ani­mat­ed Gifs

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

See the First Known Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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John Berger (RIP) and Susan Sontag Take Us Inside the Art of Storytelling (1983)

in Literature, Television | January 3rd, 2017

“Some­body dies,” says John Berg­er. “It’s not just a ques­tion of tact that one then says, well, per­haps it is pos­si­ble to tell that sto­ry,” but “it’s because, after that death, one can read that life. The life becomes read­able.” His inter­locu­tor, a cer­tain Susan Son­tag, inter­jects: “A per­son who dies at 37 is not the same as a per­son who dies at 77.” True, he replies, “but it can be some­body who dies at 90. The life becomes read­able to the sto­ry­teller, to the writer. Then she or he can begin to write.” Berg­er, the con­sum­mate sto­ry­teller as well as thinker about sto­ries, left behind these and mil­lions of oth­er mem­o­rable words, spo­ken and writ­ten, when he yes­ter­day passed away at age 90 him­self.

This con­ver­sa­tion aired 35 years ago as “To Tell a Sto­ry,” an hour­long episode of Chan­nel 4’s Voic­es, “a forum of debate about the key issues in the world of the arts and the life of the mind.” Though Berg­er and Son­tag sure­ly agreed in life on more than they dis­agreed (“not since [D.H.] Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such atten­tive­ness to the sen­su­al world with respon­sive­ness to the imper­a­tives of con­science,” the lat­ter once said of the for­mer), they here enter into a kind of debate about sto­ry­telling itself: why we do it, how we do it, when we can do it. Berg­er, for his part, char­ac­ter­izes all fic­tion as “a fight against the absurd,” against “that end­less, ter­ri­fy­ing space in which we live.”

Son­tag, in the words of Lily Dessau at Berg­er’s pub­lish­er Ver­so, “con­sid­ers the sto­ry­teller as inven­tor, in con­trol of the mate­r­i­al, out of which the ‘peo­ple come.’ Berg­er con­verse­ly takes the form of the sto­ry as the result of the lan­guage com­ing out of the peo­ple — but he does char­ac­ter­ize their dif­fer­ing views as arriv­ing at the same place — the scene of the text.” While both of them wrote fic­tion as well as essays, “Berg­er con­sid­ers the sto­ry and essay in one breath, both as a form of strug­gle to mod­el the unsayable,” while “for Son­tag the two are entire­ly sep­a­rate, although the strug­gle per­sists in both.”

Or, as Berg­er puts it in high­light­ing anoth­er aspect of the dif­fer­ence in their per­spec­tives, “You say you want to be car­ried away by the sto­ry. I want the sto­ry to stop things being car­ried away into obliv­ion, into indif­fer­ence.” The many trib­utes already paid to him, espe­cial­ly by influ­en­tial cre­ators formed in part by the influ­ence of his work, indi­cate that Berg­er’s lega­cy hard­ly finds itself now on the brink of an indif­fer­ent obliv­ion. Now that his long life has reached the end of its final chap­ter, well, per­haps we can begin to read, and to tell, his sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Til­da Swin­ton Gets a Por­trait Drawn by Art Crit­ic John Berg­er

Susan Sontag’s 50 Favorite Films (and Her Own Cin­e­mat­ic Cre­ations)

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Largest Historical Dictionary of English Slang Now Free Online: Covers 500 Years of the “Vulgar Tongue”

in English Language | January 3rd, 2017

greens-dictionary-of-slang

“The three vol­umes of Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang demon­strate the sheer scope of a life­time of research by Jonathon Green, the lead­ing slang lex­i­cog­ra­ph­er of our time. A remark­able col­lec­tion of this often reviled but end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing area of the Eng­lish lan­guage, it cov­ers slang from the past five cen­turies right up to the present day, from all the dif­fer­ent Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries and regions. Total­ing 10.3 mil­lion words and over 53,000 entries, the col­lec­tion pro­vides the def­i­n­i­tions of 100,000 words and over 413,000 cita­tions. Every word and phrase is authen­ti­cat­ed by gen­uine and ful­ly-ref­er­enced cita­tions of its use, giv­ing the work a lev­el of author­i­ty and schol­ar­ship unmatched by any oth­er pub­li­ca­tion in this field.”

If you head over to Amazon.com, that’s how you will find Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang pitched to con­sumers. The dic­tio­nary is an attrac­tive three-vol­ume, hard-bound set. But it comes at a price. $264 for a used edi­tion. $600 for a new one.

Now comes the good news. In Octo­ber, Green’s Dic­tio­nary of Slang became avail­able as a free web­site, giv­ing you access to an even more updat­ed ver­sion of the dic­tio­nary. Col­lec­tive­ly, the web­site lets you trace the devel­op­ment of slang over the past 500 years. And, as Men­tal Floss notes, the site “allows lookups of word def­i­n­i­tions and ety­molo­gies for free, and, for a well-worth-it sub­scrip­tion fee, it offers cita­tions and more exten­sive search options.” If you’ve ever won­dered about the mean­ing of words like kid­ly­wink, gol­lier, and lint­head, you now know where to begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” A 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

Oh My God! Win­ston Churchill Received the First Ever Let­ter Con­tain­ing “O.M.G.” (1917)

Free Online Eng­lish Lessons

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Why We Need to Teach Kids Philosophy & Safeguard Society from Authoritarian Control

in Education, Philosophy, Politics | January 3rd, 2017

Sev­er­al friends and rel­a­tives of mine teach phi­los­o­phy, writ­ing, and crit­i­cal think­ing to under­grad­u­ate col­lege stu­dents. And many of those peo­ple have con­fessed their dis­may in recent months. Threats and McCarthyite attacks on high­er edu­ca­tors have increased (and in places like Turkey esca­lat­ed to full-on war against aca­d­e­mics). Many edu­ca­tors are also filled with doubt about the mean­ing of their pro­fes­sion. How can they stand in the pul­pits of high­er learn­ing, many won­der, extolling the virtues of clear expres­sion, log­ic, rea­son and evi­dence, ethics, etc., when the world out­side the class­room seems to be telling their stu­dents none of these things mat­ter?

But then there are some with a more opti­mistic bent, who see more rea­son than ever to extol said virtues, with even more rig­or and urgency. Phi­los­o­phy improves our men­tal and emo­tion­al lives in every pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion. While mil­lions of peo­ple in sup­pos­ed­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries have decid­ed to put their trust in auto­crat­ic, author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers, mil­lions more have deter­mined to resist the cur­tail­ing of civ­il lib­er­ties, demo­c­ra­t­ic rights, and social progress. Edu­ca­tors see the tools of lan­guage and crit­i­cal think­ing as inte­gral to those of polit­i­cal action and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. And not only do col­lege stu­dents need these tools, argue the exec­u­tives of UK’s Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion, but chil­dren do as well, and for many of the same rea­sons.

Cre­at­ed in 2007 to con­duct “philo­soph­i­cal enquiry in schools, com­mu­ni­ties, and work­places,” the Foun­da­tion works with both chil­dren and adults. In the Aeon Mag­a­zine video above, COO and CEO Emma and Peter Wor­ley explain the spe­cial appeal of phi­los­o­phy for kids, mak­ing the case for teach­ing “think­ing well” at a young age. Rather than lec­tur­ing on the his­to­ry of ideas or pre­sent­ing a the­sis, their approach involves get­ting chil­dren “think­ing about things togeth­er, work­ing togeth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, com­ing up with counter-exam­ples… real­ly doing phi­los­o­phy in the true sense.” Young stu­dents see prob­lems for them­selves and apply their own philo­soph­i­cal solu­tions, using the nascent rea­son­ing fac­ul­ties most of us can access as soon as we’ve reached school age.

The Foun­da­tion has shown that the teach­ing of phi­los­o­phy to chil­dren “has an impact on affec­tive skills and also on cog­ni­tive skills.” In oth­er words, kids become more emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent as they become bet­ter thinkers, devel­op­ing what Socrates called “the silent dia­logue” with them­selves. These ben­e­fits are goods in their own right, argues Emma Wor­ley, and as valu­able as the arts in our lives. “We need phi­los­o­phy because it’s a human thing to do,” she says, “to think, to rea­son, to reflect.” But there is a decid­ed social util­i­ty as well. Phi­los­o­phy can “safe­guard against the ways in which edu­ca­tion might some­times be used to con­trol peo­ple,” says Peter Wor­ley: “If we have some­thing like phi­los­o­phy with­in the sys­tem, some­thing that steps out­side that sys­tem and asks ques­tions about it, then we have some­thing to pro­tect us” against author­i­tar­i­an means of thought and lan­guage con­trol.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

Hen­ry Rollins Pitch­es Edu­ca­tion as the Key to Restor­ing Democ­ra­cy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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What Does the World’s Oldest Surviving Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Performance on a 1720 Cristofori Piano

in History, Music | January 2nd, 2017

Imag­ine your favorite works for the piano—the del­i­cate and haunt­ing, the thun­der­ing and pow­er­ful. The min­i­mal­ism of Erik Satie, the Roman­ti­cism of Claude Debussy or Mod­est Mus­sorgsky, the rap­tur­ous swoon­ing of Beethoven’s con­cer­tos. Maybe it’s Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard; Thelo­nious Monk or Duke Elling­ton. Tom Waits, Tori Amos, Rufus Wain­wright, Prince… you get the idea.

Now imag­ine all of it nev­er exist­ing. A giant hole opens up in world cul­ture. Cat­a­stroph­ic! Or maybe, I sup­pose, we’d nev­er know the dif­fer­ence. But I’m cer­tain we’d be worse off for it, some­how. The piano seems inevitable when we look back into music his­to­ry. Its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors, the clavi­chord and harp­si­chord, so resem­ble the mod­ern piano that they must have evolved in just such a way, we think. But it needn’t have been so.

The harp­si­chord, writes Geor­gia State University’s Hyper­physics, “has a shape sim­i­lar to a grand piano,” but its oper­a­tion pre­vents one crit­i­cal musi­cal prop­er­ty: dynamics—“the play­er has no con­trol over the loud­ness and qual­i­ty of the tone.” On the whole, every inno­va­tion of the harpsichord’s design aimed to solve this prob­lem. Over the instrument’s 400-year his­to­ry, none of them did so as ele­gant­ly as the piano, invent­ed around 1700 by Bar­tolomeo Cristo­fori. In the video above, you can hear a slight­ly lat­er ver­sion of his instru­ment from 1720 played by pianist Dong­sok Shin—an excerpt from one of the first pieces of music ever writ­ten for the instru­ment.

Cristo­fori called his design the grave­cem­ba­lo col piano et forte, “key­board instru­ment with soft and loud” sounds. This soon short­ened to sim­ply pianoforte. It’s inter­est­ing that the word for “soft” even­tu­al­ly became its sole name. For all its grandeur and thun­der­ous capa­bil­i­ty, it’s the piano’s soft­ness that so often cap­tures our attention—the abil­i­ty of this lum­ber­ing beast of an instru­ment to pull its punch­es and move with qui­et grace. As you’ll prob­a­bly note in Shin’s demon­stra­tion, the ear­li­est pianos still retained a bit of the harpsichord’s twang, but we can also clear­ly dis­cern the woody thumps, rum­bles, and tin­kling highs of mod­ern pianos. (Com­pare it to this, for exam­ple.)

True to its name, the “qui­et nature of the piano’s birth around 1700,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, “comes as some­thing of a sur­prise.” It was invent­ed “almost entire­ly by one man,” Cristo­fori, whose exper­tise had made him stew­ard of Flo­ren­tine Prince Fer­di­nan­do d’Medici’s entire col­lec­tion of harp­si­chords and oth­er musi­cal instru­ments. The first men­tion comes from a 1700 Medici inven­to­ry describ­ing a harp­si­chord-like instru­ment “new­ly invent­ed by Bar­tolomeo Cristo­fori with ham­mers and dampers, two key­boards, and a range of four octaves, C‑c.” The first pianos had 54 keys rather than 88, and used “small wood­en ham­mers cov­ered with deer­skin.”

Oth­er mak­ers tried dif­fer­ent mech­a­nisms, but “Cristo­fori was an art­ful inven­tor,” the Met remarks, “cre­at­ing such a sophis­ti­cat­ed action for his pianos that, at the instrument’s incep­tion, he solved many of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems that con­tin­ued to puz­zle oth­er piano design­ers for the next sev­en­ty-five years of its evo­lu­tion.” These design­ers made short­cuts, since Cristofori’s “action was high­ly com­plex and thus expen­sive.” But noth­ing matched his design, and those fea­tures were “grad­u­al­ly rein­vent­ed and rein­cor­po­rat­ed in lat­er decades.”

Cristofori’s inge­nious inno­va­tions includ­ed an “escape­ment” mech­a­nism that enabled the ham­mer to fall away from the string instant­ly after strik­ing it, so as not to damp­en the string, and allow­ing the string to be struck hard­er than on a clavi­chord; a “check” that kept the fast-mov­ing ham­mer from bounc­ing back to re-hit the string; a damp­en­ing mech­a­nism on a jack to silence the string when not in use; iso­lat­ing the sound­board from the ten­sion-bear­ing parts of the case, so that it could vibrate more freely; and employ­ing thick­er strings at high­er ten­sions than on a harp­si­chord.

The piano Shin plays above is the old­est sur­viv­ing instru­ment of Cristofori’s design, and it resides at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. Only “two oth­er Cristo­fori pianos sur­vive today,” notes CMuse, “in Rome and anoth­er at Leipzi Uni­ver­si­ty.” This instru­ment might have rep­re­sent­ed an ele­gant dead end in musi­cal evo­lu­tion. Though Baroque com­posers at the time, includ­ing Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, “were aware of it,” most, like Bach, har­bored doubts. “It was only with the com­po­si­tions of Haydn and Mozart” decades lat­er “that the piano found a firm place in music.” A place so firm, it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to imag­ine the last 250 years of music with­out it.

via CMuse

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Musi­cians Play Bach on the Octo­bass, the Gar­gan­tu­an String Instru­ment Invent­ed in 1850

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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205 Big Thinkers Answer the Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”

in Science | January 2nd, 2017

question-mark

Image by Ben­jamin Reay, via Flickr Com­mons

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for the Edge.org to pose its annu­al ques­tion to some of the world’s finest minds. The 2017 edi­tion asks, “What sci­en­tif­ic term or con­cept ought to be more wide­ly known?” And the ques­tion comes pref­aced by this thought:

Richard Dawkins’ “meme” became a meme, known far beyond the sci­en­tif­ic con­ver­sa­tion in which it was coined. It’s one of a hand­ful of sci­en­tif­ic ideas that have entered the gen­er­al cul­ture, help­ing to clar­i­fy and inspire.

Of course, not every­one likes the idea of spread­ing sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing. Remem­ber what the Bish­op of Birmingham’s wife is reput­ed to have said about Darwin’s claim that human beings are descend­ed from mon­keys: “My dear, let us hope it is not true, but, if it is true, let us hope it will not become gen­er­al­ly known.”

So what estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic idea should we try to get out there? What con­cept should, at all costs, see the light of day? The replies — 205 in total — fea­ture thoughts by Richard Dawkins, of course, who’d have us learn more about the notion of “Genet­ic Book of the Dead.” You will also find selec­tions by Bri­an Eno (“Con­fir­ma­tion Bias”), Jared Dia­mond (“Com­mon Sense”),  Jan­na Levin (“The Prin­ci­ple of Least Action”), Steven Pinker (“The Sec­ond Law of Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics”) and more. Access the com­plete col­lec­tion of respons­es here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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