Vortex Erasmus : reasonable discourse

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Vortex Erasmus : reasonable discourse

				click triangles and ••• links — February 12, 2010, 10 am MDT

				The Habit of Thought, by Michael Strong, Reviewed by Dr. James Rhem

				Reviewed by Dr. James Rhem, National Teaching & Learning Forum ••• The Habit of Thought James Rhem, Executive Editor Michael Strong's The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice remains unknown to most faculty and to many faculty developers. It's a small book published in 1996 by a small publisher in North Carolina (New View). Limited marketing may account for the book's low profile in higher education circle s, or perhaps the fact that much of Strong's work has been in the K-12 world. Whatever the reasons, the book deserves wider exposure among faculty not because it offers a "magic bullet" for improving teaching - it doesn't - but because in clear, no nonsense language it sounds a call to the most noble stance any teacher can take with students, that of "an honest, open, inquiring mind." Most faculty believe they understand Socratic practice or "Socratic method," and most believe they practice it at least some of the time. Indeed, some teachers argue that Socratic practice is simply another name for class discussion. However, Strong reports: "Teachers trained in Socratic Seminars . . . believe that they are radically different from conventional classroom discussions, or from any conventional pedagogical technique. Many trained teachers, some with twenty years of experience, talk about how leading Socratic Seminars has caused them to question their entire approach to teaching. Some claim that the contact with Socratic Seminars has caused them to become angry at their own previous teaching and their own educations." (p. 47) Though he encourages it at every turn and never waivers in seeing it as doable, genuine Socratic practice as Strong describes it seems very challenging, to say the least. But it works, and committed teachers at every level can and do practice it with success. Complete article at http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/434.html

				Disputes offering instruction in the need for reasonable discourse and productive arguments. Our focus is on the skeptics, who are often overwhelmed by well-funded, established organizations, governmental, nonprofit, and commercial, whose interests will be harmed by effective challenge. Skeptics are the anti-bodies of a healthy intellectual culture. And, skeptics need criticism from people skeptical of their claims who are not advocates for their opponents.

				Swine Flu Pandemic — hoax?

				Anthropogenic Global Warming — hoax?

				Vaccines — falsely promoted or not?

				Andrew Wakefield's primate experiment

				Popular Mechanics magazine rebuts anti-vaccine theories, including Dr. Wakefield's •••

				Jerry Emanuelson on vaccination, a response to the Wakefield articles, on February 8, 2010

				I've never seen any problem with the concept of vaccination. Vaccinations have prevented hundreds of millions of premature deaths. I get an influenza vaccination every year. In 2009, I got two influenza vaccinations, which was actually vaccination against 4 strains of influenza since the ordinary seasonal influenza is actually a 3 in 1 shot. The 3 in 1 shot for strains of influenza makes sense, especially for people who get a flu shot every year -- because it is not putting too much of a strain on an individual's immune system. The same cannot be said, though, of the massive assault on the immune system of an infant that is typical of the way that vaccinations are done in children. If a very young child were to get measles, mumps and rubella at the same time, the child would probably be a candidate for the intensive care unit. If a child were to get diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus at the same time, a child of any age would be in intensive care. Yet the medical profession thinks nothing of tricking a child's immune system into thinking that it must fight off multiple diseases simultaneously. I have no problem with giving a child, or myself, as many well-tested vaccinations as possible, but it must be done in a rational way. There is no need at all for any mercury-containing preservatives. It is still done occasionally in multi-dose vials as a cost-saving measure. The cost saving is tiny, though, and the risk is too high. There is no need for massive doses of multiple vaccines all at once (unless there is something like a bio-terrorism attack with multiple agents). We don't really know if there is any danger of administering multiple vaccines in a relatively short period of time. It is likely that it over-stresses the immune system, and it almost certainly subjects children to excessive and totally unnecessary amounts of other kinds of stresses. I also have a problem with the way that vaccines are normally administered to children. If an adult were assaulted by a strange person with a needle and syringe of comparable relative size to the needle/syringe combination used on children; and if that strange person were to inject a dose into the muscle of an adult of a liquid comparable in volume to the body weight of a child, and if this were done without the permission of the person receiving the injection, the person administering such a brutal injection would be immediately arrested and not be allowed to give any more such injections. Unfortunately, most children are regarded as "less than human" in this regard. Of course, it is not possible or practical to obtain the full consent of a child before a child receives a vaccination. Nevertheless, if the child is old enough to understand anything at all about the concept of vaccination, every attempt should be made to obtain the child's consent. If this were done, vaccinations would necessarily be much less damaging to the child body, and would serve the purpose that vaccine's should serve, to educate and prepare the child's immune system. In any rational vaccination system, most children would barely feel the needle because we would NOT do such a massive sudden assault on a child's immune system. If there were a more rational vaccination of children, then I don't think that there would be nearly as many adults who have irrational beliefs about vaccinations. In one of the articles that you sent me last week, a doctor expressed the belief that vaccines cause cancer. I have never seen any evidence at all that this is true (although it may have been true in isolated cases because of sensitivities to some of the preservatives that were used in vaccinations of the past). On the other hand, infections can cause both cancers and cardiovascular disease. Vaccinations have probably caused a fairly large reduction in the number of cases of both cancer and cardiovascular disease than would otherwise have been the case, although there is no way that we will ever be able to know if this has been true. Reliance on anti-virals should be only something that is used when vaccination fails or cannot be done in time. Anti-virals are generally less reliable than the prevention afforded by vaccination. Viruses can mutate quickly to avoid an anti-viral medication. In this case, the presence of the anti-viral causes the mutated viruses to preferentially survive. When viruses mutate "in the wild," though, there is often enough similarity to a previous vaccination, that the immune system benefits from having contact with the biological imprint of a similar virus. There is usually no way for a virus to undergo a single mutation to avoid the attack of a primed immune system. We saw this with the 2009 H1N1 influenza where individuals old enough to have experienced contact with somewhat similar virus in the distant past had more immunity than younger people whose immune system had never seen such a virus. I suspect that the fact that many older people received a flu shot every year, which in recent years has nearly always had a vaccination against some strain of H1N1, also played a role in the immunity of older adults. Jerry Emanuelson

				Glyphs

				000 : The Laws of Form, by G. S. Brown, the value of bold ignorance

				487 : Liberal Education — St. John's College

				435 : Argument as a Source of Knowledge, Illustration from the History of Geology

				Argument, a source of knowledge, origins of geology: debating the age of the earth

				An article from "Outcrop" — Newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists, Vol. 57, No. 6, June 2008, by Steve Goolsby, President of the Association

				As some of you know, I like nothing better than sitting down over a good beverage and debating some contentious issue or other with my friends and colleagues. Often the issues we debate are controversial subjects that pertain to the science of geology, like global warming or the validity of the basin- centered gas model. I find these debates to be an interesting way to learn about certain issues. I thoroughly enjoy the experience if the conversation is good and the beverages are of the right type and temperature. My wife contends that this form of learning is something no more than courteous arguing, and insists that we refrain from it during our meals at home. However, I don’t plan to stop, when I’m out with my friends because I think debating is an important form of learning. After all, “controversy drives the science” of geology. So I think I’ll shock you by saying that certain controversies are not appropriate in the science of geology, or within any science, for that matter. I know that our science was established as a direct result of controversy and debate. The major issue that initially drove the development of the science of geology was a debate about how old the earth is. Western biblical scholars had calculated the age of the earth back to it’s formation in 4004 BC. Complete article at http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/435.html

				Participants in this vortex

				Michael Strong, Yasuhiko Kimura, Mark Frazier, Maureen Lancaster, Leif Smith, Chris Huston

				.oOo.