Suggestions for our Freethought Book - Q1, 2008

[Chris OConnor]

Suggestions for our Freethought Book - Q1, 2008

Use this thread for making book suggestions for 1st quarter of 2008. By "1st quarter" I mean January, February and March. We'll read and discuss 1 freethought book during this time period. We'll also read and discuss 1 additional non-fiction book, but use this thread only for suggesting books you believe to be freethought books. Another thread will be created for making all other non-fiction suggestions.

What would you like to read in January, February and March of 2008?

Remember, freethought books only!

[Niall001]

I'm just after reading the introduction to John Humprehys' In God we Doubt. It looks like the kind of book that would generate a lot of discussion. Humprehys is an agnostic and proud of it. For a flavour of the book its own thread.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-We-Doubt-Co ... 0340951265

Synopsis
Throughout the ages believers have been persecuted - usually for believing in the "wrong" God. So have non-believers who have denied the existence of God as superstitious rubbish. Today, it is the agnostics who are given a hard time. They are scorned by believers for their failure to find faith and by atheists for being hopelessly wishy-washy and weak-minded. But John Humphrys is proud to count himself among their ranks. In this book, he takes us along the spiritual road he himself has travelled. He was brought up a Christian and prayed every day of his life until his growing doubts finally began to overwhelm his faith. As one of the nation's most popular and respected broadcasters, he had the rare opportunity in 2006 of challenging leaders of our three main religions to prove to him that God does exist. The Radio Four interviews - "Humphrys In Search of God" - provoked the biggest response to anything he has done in half a century of journalism. The interviews and the massive reaction from listeners had a profound effect on him - but not in the way he expected. Doubt is not the easy option. But for the millions who can find no easy answers to the most profound questions it is the only possible one.

Review

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 402082.ece
Don't read this book hoping to learn about God. Read it to learn about John Humphrys and the thoughtful, curious Radio 4 listeners who are his natural audience. This is what he says to them about faith: "In many ways I would rather like to believe whole-heartedly in God. And yes, I know how pathetic that will sound to many people reading this."

Pathetic? Scarcely. Just wary, defensive . . . and embarrassed. He sounds like someone who expects mockery and half-suspects he deserves it.

Humphrys's attempt to hack away at the Great Questions

[MadArchitect]

Speaking of the American death penalty...

Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, by Scott Turow

From Publishers Weekly
Is there anything new to say about whether the death penalty should be abolished? It turns out there is. Bestselling author Turow (Reversible Errors) has some useful insights into this fiercely debated subject, based on his experiences as a prosecutor and, in his postprosecutorial years, working on behalf of death-row inmates, and his two years on Illinois's Commission on Capital Punishment, charged by the former Gov. George Ryan with examining how the death penalty might be more fairly administered. This is a sober and elegantly concise examination of a complex, fraught topic by an admitted "agnostic." His views veering one way and then the other, Turow shares his back-and-forth reasoning as he carefully discusses each issue, from the possible execution of an innocent person (a serious danger) to whether execution is a deterrent (it's not). Perhaps most illuminating are Turow's thoughts on victims' rights (which he says must be weighed against the needs of the community); on what to do with "the worst of the worst" (he visits a maximum security prison to meet multiple-murderer Henry Brison, who, Turow says, "most closely resembles... Hannibal Lecter"); and the question of what he calls "moral proportion," the notion that execution is meant to restore moral balance, which, he says, requires an "unfailingly accurate" system of justice. This measured weighing of the facts will be most valuable to those who, like Turow, are on the fence-they will find an invaluable, objective look at both sides of this critical but highly charged debate.

Incidentally, I'm posting this one here because the book deals explicitly with arguments for either side of a debateable issue, not with strighforward information. Maybe I need straightening out again, but that strikes me as a scenario best handled in the freethought category.

[Mr. P]

How about a reading about HOW kids are being taught today as opposed to how they SHOULD be? There may be very good books out there I am not familiar with, but I found these books recently and this is what made me think of this topic.

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach

From Publishers Weekly
The failings of schools have been discussed and analyzed from a dazzling array of perspectives. In this study, the author, a professor at the Harvard School of Education and a practitioner of cognitive science based on a theory of multiple intelligences, adopts a credibly innovative approach, contending that even when a school appears to succeed, "it typically fails to achieve its most important missions." The root flaw, as he views it, is a lack of "genuine understanding"--as opposed to "acceptable mastery"--on the student's part. Gardner sees access to better education in the alliance of three potential teammates: the intuitive preschooler, the traditional older child working through a curriculum, and an expert/teacher capable of extending skills and understandings in new ways. One answer to why so many students lose their enthusiasm for school is found here, as well as promising proposals for school reform, like museum collaborations and apprenticeship projects. Gardner's study offers a wealth of material for significant school restructuring.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
A convincing call to reexamine the way children learn in their earliest years, and to make use of those new findings in classrooms. MacArthur fellow Gardner (Education/Harvard; To Open Minds, 1989, etc.) developed a theory that human beings learn and perform through multiple intelligences (seven, to be precise, from verbal to kinesthetic and interpersonal). His own and other studies in these areas revealed that students who may be letter-perfect in a school subject such as physics fail spectacularly in transferring that knowledge from classroom exercises to problems in the real world. Even adults abandon book learning and invoke pictures of the world--including stereotypes about the forces of gravity or about skin color--that they constructed as early as five years old. The emperor is exposed as being not only naked but ignorant. If such early childhood ``schema,'' as Piaget called them, are so tenacious, then harness them for learning in the advanced classroom, Gardner advises. He recommends reevaluating the concept of apprenticeships and using the hands-on, multimedia techniques seen in children's museum programs. The developmental theories of Piaget and Chomsky are respectfully challenged, the push to ``cultural literacy'' and ``back to basics'' less respectfully. At issue is the unexamined idea. Gardner calls for schools and teachers to encourage personal ``Christopherian confrontations,'' the encounter between belief and reality that Christopher Columbus presented when he did not sail off the edge of the world. An exciting proposal for restructuring schools in order to guide students to a genuine understanding of the world. A bonus is the extraordinary insight into why children and adults seem to resist learning and why they often behave in such mystifying ways. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

or

The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them

Amazon.com
Everyone wonders why American schools have gone bad. E.D. Hirsch, author of Cultural Literacy, offers a compelling explanation. Schools do a lousy job of transmitting "core knowledge" to their students, he says. To improve, they must abandon all of their feel-good theories about "critical thinking" and work harder to endow kids with intellectual capital at an early age. It may sound like common sense, but this important book shows why so many educators appear to have lost theirs. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Bestselling author Hirsch (Cultural Literacy) argues that American education, kindergarten through high school, has been undermined by a deep contempt for factual knowledge and an addiction to fads such as "project-oriented" instruction, "relevant" topics, "child-centered" activities and building students' self-esteem. In a damning, highly provocative, full-scale assault on today's educational establishment, this University of Virginia English professor calls for a return to a so-called traditional approach emphasizing drill, verbal practice, memorization and interactive classroom instruction. Hirsch, who advocates a grade-by-grade core curriculum, buttresses his pragmatic tack with cognitive-psychology research and international comparative studies of classroom practice. An enjoyable 30-page glossary demystifies educators' slogans, pet phrases and jargon. A rigorous polemic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Or something of that nature. We can also consider a suggestion I have made repeatedly here about have a TOPICAL discussion, this way people can bring in their own sources and we can address more than what is in one book.

Mr. P.

[Dissident Heart]

Mr. P: How about a reading about HOW kids are being taught today as opposed to how they SHOULD be? There may be very good books out there I am not familiar with, but I found these books recently and this is what made me think of this topic.

I think this is an excellent suggestion. The challenge may put as: what kind of education produces freethinkers? Education for Freethought? I especially like the choice of Howard Gardner who has spent a lifetime of scholarship and leadership in redirecting and revaluating education theory and practice.

I think The Unschooled Mind is great choice and would certainly provde Booktalk with ample material to discuss the nature and purpose of education. Still, I would utilize a later book by Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests, the K-12 Education that Every Child Deserves which incorporates many corrections and answers to critics since his 1991 Unschooled Mind.

The Disciplined Mind:What All Students Should Understand--Howard Gardner envisions an educational system that will help younger generations rise to the challenges of the future, while preserving the traditional goals of a "humane" education. He argues that, in contrast to the fact-based, standardized-test model that has gripped both policy-makers and the public, K-12 education should enhance a deep understanding of three principles: truth, beauty, and goodness. Gardner explores how teaching students three subjects--the theory of evolution, the music of Mozart, and the lessons of the Holocaust--would illuminate the nature of truth, beauty, and morality.

Here's a link to Gardner's bibliography http://www.howardgardner.com/books/books.html I think just about any of his books would be an excellent opportunity for Booktalk to probe a bit deeper into what we mean by Mind and what we should do with it.

[seeker]

Here's a book I would like to read: Truth: A Guide by Simon Blackburn. Some reviews:

From Publishers Weekly
Admirably sketching the battle lines currently staked out over the idea of objective truth, a Cambridge professor of philosophy makes his subject lively and accessible even as he parts some of its deepest waters, with absolutists-traditionalists-realists on the one side and relativists-postmodernists-idealists on the other. The absolutists believe in "plain, unvarnished objective fact"; the relativists say with Nietzsche, "There are no facts, only interpretations." Blackburn scrutinizes the claims of both sides with a collegial but critical eye, carefully distinguishing positions and identifying places where the two sides are speaking past each other, covering, among others, Protagoras, Plato, Hume, James, Nagel, Wittgenstein, Locke, Rorty and Davidson. He constructs a simple diagram that makes sense of four contrasting attitudes toward truth: eliminativism, realism, constructivism and quietism. Out of this inquiry emerges a middle position: truth is real if accepted in a minimalist way; relativism is not necessarily incoherent; and we can respond to science with "well-mannered animation" that is indistinguishable from belief. As Blackburn recognizes, this solution will not please everyone: absolutists may find it treasonous, relativists too conservative. But the overall result is to salvage a plausible version of truth. Blackburn considers truth "the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy," and, with wit and erudition, he succeeds in proving that point. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Blackburn's lively new book 'Truth: A Guide' will challenge and surprise you.... The great achievement of 'Truth' is to encapsulate the major lines of argument on this intractable question within the covers of a book you can read in a day or two. His chapter on Nietzsche, the fountainhead of modern philosophy and the patron saint of relativism, is worth the price of admission by itself."--Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

"Admirably sketching the battle lines currently staked out over the idea of objective truth, [Blackburn] makes his subject lively and accessible even as he parts some of its deepest waters.... Blackburn considers truth 'the most exciting and engaging issue in the whole of philosophy,' and, with wit and erudition, he succeeds in proving that point."--Publishers Weekly

"Fluid, highly literate, and deeply informed.... Highly recommended for academic philosophy and literature collections. --Library Journal

"The pleasure of reading this beautifully written and crafted book is almost sensual, so complete does each sentence seem in its witty unfolding. Blackburn takes up the knottiest philosophical issues--truth, justice, belief, evidence, interpretation--and without dissolving the knots he carefully undoes them, and then, in some cases, reties them. A wonderful embracing tour through the minefield of philosophical controversy that will inform the novice and delight the afficionado."--Stanley Fish

"Gently leads the reader on a guided tour of one simple question--whether there is a universally applicable set of data that can be called capital-T 'Truth'--and its infinite complications."--Seattle Times

"If you're annoyed, even incensed, at the relativism and ironic nihilism of the youth (or their free-thinking professors), and you're looking for a vicarious voice to denounce the abject postmodern menace and stand up for Western rationalism, this could be the book for you."--Barry Allen, The Globe and Mail

"Between the Scylla of relativism and the Charybdis of absolutism, Simon Blackburn does not merely navigate, but pleasure-sails, visiting and appreciating each. Whether you are appalled by postmodernism, incensed by smug scientism, or simply 'perplexed,' you'll find Blackburn's 'guide' edifying. Learn here what truth is, why it is so elusive, and what hope there is for human knowledge."--Louise Antony, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University