With Obtuse Spelling Rules, Pronunciation Becomes Reliant...

Since our current orthografy bears no real relation to the present pronunciation, but is at best an imperfect attempt to represent that of the Elizabethan period, English pronunciation has become almost entirely a matter of oral tradition as unsafe a gide in regard to correctness in speech as it is in regard to correctness in history. We learn to talk, and continue to talk, entirely "by ear," and with the same tendency to uncertainty and variation as do those who play music by ear. The...

 Mathematics Should be Taught Like Art

Imagine you had to take an art class in which you were taught how to paint a fence or a wall, but you were never shown the paintings of the great masters, and you weren't even told that such paintings existed. Pretty soon you'd be asking, why study art? That's absurd, of course, but it's surprisingly close to the way we teach children mathematics. In elementary and middle school and even into high school, we hide math's great masterpieces from students' view. The arithmetic, algebraic equati...

 Conservatives Reject Inconvenient Facts

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it – or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance m...