Free Republic

Trendy "isms" are incompatible with lasting knowledge WHAT is the best way to introduce young people to literature? Is it to reveal to them the joy of reading great writing, and how themes and plots developed even centuries ago can be an anchor for their lives in the modern world? Or is it to treat every work as a "text" no better than any other, dissect them all ruthlessly and examine the entrails for political, sexual and racial bias? This debate has flared up again this week, sparked both by John Howard's comments on the "gobbledegook" taught in Australian English...

with the onset of the internet the abundance of information, it is unbelievable that a hazy and different picture of the past that challenges all our cultures and belief is being unveild while the world continues relentlessly into chaos and extremism. there just to many fights for the common man in every daylife. the question of our past present and futures needs to be discussed openly with open minds.

Call for Papers Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets Editors: Olga Gershenson (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) Barbara Penner (University College-London) "You know what they say about men who hang around women's lavatories. They're asking to have their illusions shattered." - Georgina to Albert, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover We invite contributions for the edited collection Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets. Public toilets are amenities with a functional, even a civic, purpose. Yet they also act as the unconscious of public spaces. They can be a haven: a place to regain composure,...

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the humanities in Washington "don't get no respect." Not as much as they should, anyway. We're a company town and the company makes politics. But like a blind squirrel who finds an acorn once in a while, politicians and the journalists gather occasionally with others who crave more profundity than the noise in political rhetoric to listen to the annual >Jefferson Lecture. "The training of the intellect was meant to produce an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction but it also had practical goals of importance to the individual and the entire community, to make the humanistically trained individuals...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 17, 2004) -- President George W. Bush awarded the 2004 National Humanities Medal today to seven distinguished Americans and one historical society for their contributions to the humanities. At a White House ceremony, the President presented National Humanities Medals to Marva Collins, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Hilton Kramer, Madeleine L'Engle, Harvey Mansfield, John Searle, Shelby Steele, and the United States Capitol Historical Society. The National Humanities Medal, first awarded in 1989 as the Charles Frankel Prize, honors individuals and organizations whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve...

Hey....any Jazz musicians or Teachers who do curriculum development for Humanities need money???? The government has some for you in the way of grants from about $200,000 - $370,000+ .....READ THEM BELOW NEA JAZZ MASTERS ON TOUR ________________________________________ ________________________________________ General Information Document Type: Grants Notice Funding Opportunity Number: PS 04-05 Posted Date: Jul 28, 2004 Original Due Date for Applications: Aug 30, 2004 Current Due Date for Applications: Aug 30, 2004 Archive Date: Sep 29, 2004 Funding Instrument Type: Cooperative Agreement Category of Funding Activity: Arts (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA) Expected Number of Awards: 2 Estimated Total Program Funding:...

Disappearing Act The Invisible Adjunct shuts down her popular Weblog and says goodbye to academe By SCOTT SMALLWOOD Through the blurry glass of the classroom door, a professor can be seen at the front of the room. It is a woman, but the thick window obscures any clues about how old she is or how tall or what color hair she might have. Maybe brown. She's the Invisible Adjunct. Or at least, she used to be. After five years of being an adjunct and a year after starting one of the most popular academic Weblogs, she is giving up and...

Grand Blanc - Creationism and the Bible would be taught in Grand Blanc public schools under separate proposals that school officials said they will consider. Superintendent Gary Lipe also has approached other Genesee County school chiefs to ask them to consider jointly offering an online course on the Bible as literature or history. Lipe and other school officials said it's possible to teach about the religious topics in a nonreligious way, but a spokeswoman for the ACLU said it would likely challenge the school district in court. "We know the Bible cannot be taught as theology in public schools," Lipe...

In his final "Sermon By the Sea" given in 1959 at Asilomar, California, Ernest Holmes shared with us his vision of the outcome of global well-being, the human species and Earth transformed by the consciousness that he had articulated as Science of Mind. His Sermon is a prescription for planetary resurrection, a prophetic, millennial assertion of the role of Religious Science in bringing about the world's rebirth: [Science of Mind] is the most direct impartation of Divine Wisdom that has ever come to the world, because it incorporates the precepts of Jesus, and Emerson, and Buddha, and all the rest...

Somewhat sentimentally, Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, states the obvious in an editoral for the Wall Street Journal: the study of the humanities has gone to hell in a hand basket. It has been said that the erosion of freedom comes from three sources: from without, from within and from the passing of time. Though not as visible as marching armies, the injuries of time lead to the same outcome: a surrender of American ideals. Abraham Lincoln warned of this "silent artillery"--the fading memory of what we believe as Americans and why. And this loss...

<p>This year's recipients of the National Medal for the Humanities, who will be honored today by President Bush at a White House reception, are a distinguished lot.</p> <p>But we're particularly pleased to note the inclusion of author-essayist Midge Decter among those getting the nation's highest acknowledgment of the contributions of scholars and writers.</p>

America's arts in crisis as hard-up states threaten to suspend all funding By David Usborne in New York 25 February 2003 Culture inthe United States is in acute crisis as state governments across the country ponder eliminating funding for the arts entirely to help to bridge some of the worst budget deficits in decades.To the abject dismay of many arts advocates, at least three states have put forward plans to suspend all funding for cultural organisations for the foreseeable future. The first state to take such drastic action is likely to be Arizona.The extraordinary measures threaten to strangle cultural institutions...

Jimmy Carter offers to mediate peace talks between Israel and Palestinians... developing...