Education in Crises?
With nationwide battles between the State and the Teacher’s Union on how we teach our children, the only voices heard seem to be conservative and centrist. There doesn’t seem to be anyone representing the children, themselves. But progressive voices do exist, and we will speak with two of them concerning the current crises in American education.
Kate Burch is Principal of Harvest Collegiate High School which was her master’s thesis at Teacher’s College Columbia University. She graduated from Harvard with high honors in history and literature. She taught at an alternative school, Humanities Prep, for many years. In 2007 she spent a year in Ghana on a Fulbright from Yale and developed lessons about Africa to bring back to the classroom.
Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer who has explored a number of topics in education, parenting, and human behavior. He is considered a leading figure in progressive education and has also offered critiques of many traditional aspects of parenting, managing, and American society more generally, drawing in each case from social science research. Kohn’s challenges to widely accepted theories and practices have made him a controversial figure, particularly with conservatives and those who defend the specific practices he calls into question, such as the use of competition, incentive programs, conventional discipline, standardized testing, grades, homework, and traditional schooling.
The Republican Brain w/ Chris Mooney
For the Equal Time for Freethought Spring Fund-Drive Special, we will be discussing science journalist Chris Mooney‘s new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science–and Reality.
Why do conservatives and Libertarians think differently than liberals and anarchists/socialists? Why do those on the Left seem ambiguous and often disunited or overly nuanced in their attempts to engage the political landscape while those on the Right seem close-minded and unwilling to accept objective scientific facts?
We discussed these issues and more with author Chris Mooney and will be offering his book and the entire interview we conducted with him as thank-you’s for contributing to WBAI-NY during our program! All proceeds go to the radio station so that it can continue to bring you programming you won’t find elsewhere.. especially programming like Equal Time for Freethought – the ONLY humanist/atheist/freethought broadcast program on the East Coast (and perhaps nation-wide)!
Ian Murphy; Militant Atheist for Congress
So you’ve heard about Ian Murphy, editor of The Buffalo Beast and the voice behind the famous “David Koch” prank call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker? Did you know he’s running for Congress on the Green Party line to fill the disgraced Republican Chris Lee’s seat?
Murphy has outed himself as… a “Militant Atheist” and so he will join ETFF host Michael O’Neil to discuss his view of atheism, why he’s running for Congress, and much much more on the next Equal Time For Freethought!
Is Social Science bunk?
Is Social Science even science?
Join us as ETFF focuses in on questions such as these with three extraordinary guests for this one hour special presentation!
Challenging the value and accuracy of the social scientific enterprise will be Dr. Barbara Oakley, author of “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend.” Dr. Oakley has been doing interviews (including for the Center For Inquiry’s podcast, ‘Point of Inquiry’), attacking social science and some of its seminal studies.
Standing up for social science in general will be Dean of Social Sciences and University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University, Dr. Dalton Conley. And back with us for a second time to address criticisms regarding his Stanford Prison Experiment will be Social Science legend, Dr. Philip Zimbardo.
The Sequel to this program can be found here!