Where Do Ethics Fit In Today’s Classroom?

Talk to any professional educator in the United States today and you will hear endless gripes about underperforming students, helicopter parents, and unsympathetic and detached administrators. What is noticeably lacking (at least noticeable to me, anyway) in this discourse is a vital question: In a technologically hyper-connected 21st century, where does morality fit and, how [...]

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I’m Back But I Haven’t Returned From the Dead

It’s been quite awhile since my last post but I’ve returned! Here’s what kept me busy these past several months:
student teaching!
From mid January to early May, I’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time student teaching in a northern New Jersey suburban high school. I taught American history and an American history through film course. It [...]

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The Good Life and the Developing World: A Review of “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs

Here’s a fact for you: Half of the world’s population live on two dollars a day or less. Keep that in mind when you feel as though you’re life isn’t going as planned or circumstances didn’t develop the way you had hoped.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs is on a mission. Leading after a brief forward by U2’s [...]

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The Brief Ramblings of a Traveler-Wannabe

In my free time, I like to lurk around the popular travel message boards. Web sites like BootsnAll and Lonely Planet are loaded with thousands of travelers visiting all sorts of places around the world, from Belize to Beijing and everything in between.
Maybe it’s just the daydreamer in me but I love the idea of [...]

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Government and the Good Life in the Ancient World: A Brief Review of "The Politics" by Aristotle

The role of government in defining the good life is the subject of The Politics by Aristotle. Like his predecessor Plato, Aristotle sought to find the best type of constitution under which any given people could live. His conclusion: a mixed constitution (one that is neither fully an oligarchy or a democracy) provides the most [...]

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Testing My Passions

Since I work in publishing, I have access to a lot of books. One that came across my path was The Passion Test by Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood. This one struck a chord because, although there are many self-help and inspirational books out there, Janet and Chris’s book has specific activities you can [...]

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Testing My Passions with “The Passion Test”

Since I work in publishing, I have access to a lot of books. One that came across my path was The Passion Test by Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood. This one struck a chord because, although there are many self-help and inspirational books out there, Janet and Chris’s book has specific activities you can [...]

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Making Happy Students

Today’s high schools mostly focus on academic achievement and extracurriculars such as athletics and various social clubs. Course content is conventional and subject-specific: language arts, history, science, mathematics, and of course P.E. A school in Germany, however, is adding another class requirement: happiness.
“‘We want to teach contentment, self-confidence and personal responsibility,’ the school’s director Ernst [...]

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How To Live The Good Life

I’ve started this blog with one purpose: to track my search for the “Good Life.” What exactly that is, I’m still not sure. What I’ve discovered so far is what is definitely not the Good Life. Those are:

Impressing others
Earning a whole lot of money
Possessing a vast assortment of things

While there may be a correlation between [...]

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