NBC University Theater Adapted Great Novels to Radio & Gives Listeners College Credit : Hear 110 Episodes from a 1940s eLearning Experiment

in Education, Literature, Radio | October 9th, 2015

Philco

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Joe Haupt

Before the inter­net became our pri­ma­ry source of infor­ma­tion and entertainment—before it became for many com­pa­nies a pri­ma­ry rev­enue stream—it promised to rev­o­lu­tion­ize edu­ca­tion. We would see a demo­c­ra­t­ic spread of knowl­edge, old hier­ar­chies would crum­ble, ancient divi­sions would cease to mat­ter in the new pri­mor­dial cyber-soup where any­one with entry-lev­el con­sumer hard­ware and the patience to learn basic HTML could cre­ate a plat­form and a com­mu­ni­ty. And even as that imag­ined utopia became just anoth­er econ­o­my, with its own win­ners and losers, large—and free—educational projects still seemed per­fect­ly fea­si­ble.

These days, that poten­tial hasn’t exact­ly evap­o­rat­ed, but we’ve had an increas­ing num­ber of reasons—the threat­ened sta­tus of net neu­tral­i­ty promi­nent among them—to curb our enthu­si­asm. Yet as we remind you dai­ly here at Open Cul­ture, free edu­ca­tion­al resources still abound online, even if the online world isn’t as rad­i­cal as some rad­i­cals had hoped. Fre­quent­ly, those resources reside in online libraries like the Inter­net Archive, who store some of the best edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al from pre-inter­net times—such as the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater, a pro­gram that comes from anoth­er tran­si­tion­al time for anoth­er form of mass media: radio.

Before pay­ola and tele­vi­sion took over in the fifties, radio also showed great poten­tial for democ­ra­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion. In 1942, at the height of the Gold­en Age of Radio, NBC “rein­au­gu­rat­ed” a pre­vi­ous con­cept for what it called the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty of the Air. “Through­out the mid-1940s,” writes the Dig­i­tal Deli, an online muse­um of gold­en age radio, “NBC pro­duced some twen­ty-five pro­duc­tions specif­i­cal­ly designed to both edu­cate and enter­tain. Indeed, many of those pro­grams were incor­po­rat­ed into the cur­ric­u­la of high schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties through­out the U.S. and Cana­da.”

After 1948, the pro­gram was retooled as NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater, then sim­ply NBC The­ater. “Irre­spec­tive of the title change,” how­ev­er, the pro­gram “con­tin­ued to main­tain the same high stan­dards and con­tin­ued to expand the num­ber of col­leges offer­ing col­lege cred­it for lis­ten­ing to and study­ing the pro­gram­s’s offer­ings.” Dig­i­tal Deli has the full details of this pro­to-MOOC’s cur­ricu­lum. It con­sists of lis­ten­ing to adap­ta­tions of “great Amer­i­can sto­ries,” great “world” stories–from Voltaire, Swift, and others–and adap­ta­tions of mod­ern Amer­i­can and British fic­tion and “Great Works of World Lit­er­a­ture.”

In short, the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater adap­ta­tions might sub­sti­tute for a col­lege-lev­el lit­er­ary edu­ca­tion for those unable to attend a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty. In the playlist above, you can hear every episode from the show’s final run from 1948 to 1951. We begin with an adap­ta­tion of Sin­clair Lewis’s Main Street and end with Thomas Hardy’s “The With­ered Arm.” In-between hear clas­sic radio dra­ma adap­ta­tions of every­thing from Austen to Faulkn­er and Hem­ing­way to Ibsen. There are 110 episodes in total.

Each episode fea­tures com­men­tary from dis­tin­guished authors and crit­ics, includ­ing Robert Penn War­ren, E.M. Forster, and Kather­ine Anne Porter. “Apart from the obvi­ous aca­d­e­m­ic val­ue” of the series, writes Dig­i­tal Deli, “it’s clear that con­sid­er­able thought—and dar­ing—went into the selec­tions as well.” Despite the tremen­dous increase in col­lege atten­dance through the G.I. Bill, this was a peri­od of “ris­ing hos­til­i­ty towards aca­d­e­mics, pure­ly intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, and the free exchange of philoso­phies in gen­er­al.”

The ensu­ing decade of the fifties might be char­ac­ter­ized cul­tur­al­ly, writes Dig­i­tal Deli, as an “intel­lec­tu­al vacuum”—anti-intellectual atti­tudes swept the coun­try, fueled by Cold War polit­i­cal repres­sion. And radio became pri­mar­i­ly a means of enter­tain­ment and adver­tis­ing, com­pet­ing with tele­vi­sion for an audi­ence. Qual­i­ty radio dra­mas continued—most notably of excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion. But nev­er again would an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram of NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater’s scope, ambi­tion, and rad­i­cal poten­tial appear on U.S. radio waves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Free: Lis­ten to 298 Episodes of the Vin­tage Crime Radio Series, Drag­net

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Initiative

in Education | October 8th, 2015

If you want to pre­pare for a career prac­tic­ing law, you could do much worse than join­ing Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s debate team. But if, far on the oth­er end of the spec­trum of the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence, you end up deep on the wrong side of the law, going to prison rather than col­lege, you need not relin­quish your dreams of excelling at this tra­di­tion­al intel­lec­tu­al sport. We now have the prece­dent to prove it: “Months after win­ning a nation­al title,” reports the Guardian’s Lau­ren Gam­bi­no, “Harvard’s debate team has fall­en to a group of New York prison inmates.”

“The show­down,” which revolved around the ques­tion of whether pub­lic schools should be allowed to turn away undoc­u­ment­ed stu­dents, “took place at the East­ern cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty in New York, a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison where con­victs can take cours­es taught by fac­ul­ty from near­by Bard Col­lege, and where inmates have formed a pop­u­lar debate club.” They call this pro­gram the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive, under which inmates have the chance to earn a Bard Col­lege degree (through a non-voca­tion­al “lib­er­al arts cur­ricu­lum, includ­ing lit­er­a­ture, for­eign lan­guage, phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry and the social sci­ences, math­e­mat­ics, sci­ence, and the arts”) at satel­lite cam­pus­es estab­lished in six New York state pris­ons. You can see this selec­tive, rig­or­ous and high­ly unusu­al edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion in action in the Wash­ing­ton Post video above. And also in a 2011 PBS News Hour pro­file below.

The Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive’s debate vic­to­ry over Har­vard made for a notable event in the pro­gram’s his­to­ry indeed. “But it’s also worth point­ing out,” writes Peter Hol­ley, author of the Post arti­cle, “the fal­la­cy of our under­ly­ing assump­tions about such a matchup — the first (and most per­ni­cious) being that crim­i­nals aren’t smart. If a defin­i­tive link between crim­i­nal­i­ty and below-aver­age intel­li­gence exists, nobody has found it.” The Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive has oper­at­ed on that premise since 2001, and its debate team’s pre­vi­ous high-pro­file win saw it beat­ing that of West Point — all, you may hard­ly believe, through old-fash­ioned research, with­out any kind of access to the inter­net. If you’d like to leave your con­do­lences for the Har­vard Col­lege Debat­ing Union, you may do so at their Face­book page. You can also make a worth­while finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Bald­win Debates Mal­colm X (1963) and William F. Buck­ley (1965): Vin­tage Video & Audio

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

The His­toric LSD Debate at MIT: Tim­o­thy Leary v. Pro­fes­sor Jerome Lettvin (1967)

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Noam Chomsky & Lawrence Krauss Talk About Education, Political Activism, Technology & More Before a Sold-Out Crowd

in Education, Philosophy, Science, Technology | October 6th, 2015

Found­ed and direct­ed by physi­cist Lawrence Krauss, Ari­zona State’s Ori­gins Project has for sev­er­al years brought togeth­er some of the biggest minds in the sci­ences and human­i­ties for friend­ly debates and con­ver­sa­tions about “the 21st Century’s great­est chal­lenges.” Pre­vi­ous all-star pan­els have includ­ed Krauss, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Bri­an Greene, and Richard Dawkins. Stephen Hawk­ing has graced the ASU Ori­gins Project stage, as has actor and sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor Alan Alda. And this past March, in a sold-out, high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed Ori­gins Project event, Krauss wel­comed Noam Chom­sky to the stage for a lengthy inter­view, which you can watch above.

Although Krauss says he’s wary of hero wor­ship in his lauda­to­ry intro­duc­tion, he nonethe­less finds him­self ask­ing “What Would Noam Chom­sky Do” when faced with a dilem­ma. He also points out that Chom­sky has been “mar­gin­al­ized in U.S. media” for his anti-war, anar­chist polit­i­cal views. Those views, of course, come wide­ly into play dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, which ranges from the the­o­ry and pur­pose of education—a sub­ject Chom­sky has expound­ed on a great deal in books and inter­views—to the fate of polit­i­cal dis­si­dents through­out his­to­ry.

Chom­sky also gives us his views on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Q&A por­tion of the talk above, in which he answers ques­tions about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence—anoth­er sub­ject he’s touched on in the past—and ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion, among a great many oth­er top­ics. Krauss most­ly hangs back dur­ing the ini­tial dis­cus­sion but takes a more active role in the ses­sion above, offer­ing views on med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic ethics that will be famil­iar to those who fol­low his athe­ist activism and cham­pi­oning of ratio­nal­i­ty over reli­gious dog­ma.

What you won’t see in the video above is a con­ver­sa­tion Chom­sky and Krauss had with Moth­er­board’s Daniel Ober­haus, who caught up with both thinkers dur­ing the ASU event to get their take on what he calls “anoth­er great space race.” As Ober­haus makes clear, the cur­rent com­pe­ti­tion is not nec­es­sar­i­ly between glob­al super­pow­ers, but—as with so much mod­ern research and development—between pub­lic and pri­vate enti­ties, such as NASA and Space X. As we briefly dis­cussed in a post yes­ter­day on the huge amount of pub­lic domain space pho­tog­ra­phy freely avail­able for use, pri­vate space explo­ration makes research pro­pri­etary, mit­i­gat­ing the poten­tial pub­lic ben­e­fits of gov­ern­ment pro­grams.

As Chom­sky puts it, “the envi­ron­ment, the com­mons… they’re a com­mon pos­ses­sion, but space is even more so. For indi­vid­u­als to allow insti­tu­tions like cor­po­ra­tions to have any con­trol over it is dev­as­tat­ing in its con­se­quences. It will also almost cer­tain­ly under­mine seri­ous research.” He refers to the exam­ple of most mod­ern computing—developed under pub­licly-fund­ed gov­ern­ment pro­grams, then mar­ket­ed and sold back to us by cor­po­ra­tions. Krauss makes a case for unmanned space explo­ration as the cost-effec­tive option, and both thinkers dis­cuss the prob­lem of mil­i­ta­riz­ing space, the ulti­mate goal of Cold War space pro­grams before the fall of the Sovi­et Union. The con­ver­sa­tion is rich and reveal­ing and makes an excel­lent sup­ple­ment to the already rich dis­cus­sion Krauss and Chom­sky have in the videos above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins Project Brings Togeth­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Fla­tow, and More on One Stage

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Animated Introduction to Virginia Woolf

in Animation, Education, K-12, Literature | September 21st, 2015

It’s a pity writer Vir­ginia Woolf (1882–1941) drowned her­self before the advent of the Inter­net.

Indus­tri­al­iza­tion did not faze her.

It’s less clear how the great observ­er of “the Mod­ern Age” would’ve respond­ed to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of Mom­my blog­gers.

Their sheer num­bers sug­gest that per­haps female writ­ers do not need a “room of one’s own” (though pre­sum­ably all of them would be in favor of such a devel­op­ment.)

Woolf’s name is an endur­ing one, inspir­ing both the title of a clas­sic Amer­i­can play and a dog­gy day care facil­i­ty. Its own­er passed away near­ly 75 years ago, yet she remains a peren­ni­al on Women’s Stud­ies’ syl­labi.

Ergo, it’s pos­si­ble for the gen­er­al pub­lic to know of her, with­out know­ing much of any­thing about her and her work. (Find her major works on our lists of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books).

The lat­est ani­mat­ed install­ment in The School of Life human­i­ties series seeks to rem­e­dy that sit­u­a­tion in ten min­utes with the video above, which offers insight into her place in both the West­ern canon and the ever-glam­orous Blooms­bury Group, and cel­e­brates her as a keen observ­er of life’s dai­ly rou­tine. And that by-now-famil­iar cut-out ani­ma­tion style takes full advan­tage of the author’s best known head shots.

Arrange what­ev­er pieces come your way.

- Vir­ginia Woolf

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Vir­ginia Woolf and Friends Dress Up as “Abyssin­ian Princes” and Fool the British Roy­al Navy (1910)

Vir­ginia Woolf’s Hand­writ­ten Sui­cide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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New Research Shows How Music Lessons During Childhood Benefit the Brain for a Lifetime

in Education, K-12, Music, Science | September 4th, 2015

As a some­time musi­cian, it’s only nat­ur­al that I want my four-year-old daugh­ter to take an inter­est in music. Sure, it’s a fun bond­ing activ­i­ty, and sure, there may be a bit of a stage dad lurk­ing inside me at times. But I’m also con­vinced of the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits play­ing a musi­cal instru­ment can have on one’s per­son­al devel­op­ment. New sci­ence, it seems, backs up this intu­ition. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed last year on a recent study from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty which found that “Music train­ing not only helps chil­dren devel­op fine motor skills, but aids emo­tion­al and behav­ioral mat­u­ra­tion as well.”

This may not come as a sur­prise. And yet, the details of the study pro­vide insights our intu­itions about the pow­er of musi­cal edu­ca­tion may lack. For one thing, as you can see in the CNN report above, the ben­e­fits of learn­ing to play music as a child can last for decades, even if some­one hasn’t picked up an instru­ment since those ear­ly lessons. As Dr. Nina Kraus, direc­tor of Northwestern’s Audi­to­ry Neu­ro­science Lab­o­ra­to­ry, explains, good musi­cal tim­ing is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with read­ing skills and gen­er­al men­tal acu­ity. Accord­ing to a co-author of the study, James Hudzi­ak, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont, ear­ly musi­cal train­ing was shown to have “accel­er­at­ed cor­ti­cal orga­ni­za­tion in atten­tion skill, anx­i­ety man­age­ment and emo­tion­al con­trol.” These brain changes can accom­pa­ny us well into old age.

Anoth­er, Cana­di­an study, pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary in the The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, found that child­hood music lessons boost the abil­i­ty of old­er adults to hear speech, a skill that begins to weak­en lat­er in life. The study found “robust” evi­dence that “start­ing for­mal lessons on a musi­cal instru­ment pri­or to age 14 and con­tin­u­ing intense train­ing for up to a decade appears to enhance key areas in the brain that sup­port speech recog­ni­tion.” Even music lessons tak­en lat­er life can help reha­bil­i­tate the brains of old­er adults. “The find­ings,” writes Sci­ence Dai­ly, “under­score the impor­tance of music instruc­tion in schools and in reha­bil­i­ta­tive pro­grams for old­er adults.”

Music teach­ers cer­tain­ly need this kind of evi­dence to bol­ster sup­port for ail­ing pro­grams in schools, and musi­cal­ly-inclined par­ents will cheer these find­ings as well. But before the stage par­ent in you begins enrolling your kid in every music les­son you can fit into the sched­ule, take heed. As Dr. Kraus dis­cov­ered in the North­west­ern study, forc­ing kids to show up and par­tic­i­pate under duress won’t exer­cise their brains. Real, active engage­ment is key. “We like to say that ‘mak­ing music mat­ters,’” says Kraus, “because it is only through the active gen­er­a­tion and manip­u­la­tion of sound that music can rewire the brain.” While musi­cal train­ing may be one par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy­able way to strength­en cog­ni­tion, it isn’t the only way. But even if they don’t stick with it, the kids will­ing to put in the hours (and yes, the longer the bet­ter) will expe­ri­ence pos­i­tive change that lasts a life­time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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1,000,000 Minutes of Newsreel Footage by AP & British Movietone Released on YouTube

in Education, History, Television, YouTube | July 25th, 2015

Both Faulkn­er and the physi­cists may be right: the pas­sage of time is an illu­sion. And yet, for as long as we’ve been keep­ing score, it’s seemed that his­to­ry real­ly exists, in increas­ing­ly dis­tant forms the fur­ther back we look. As Jonathan Crow wrote in a recent post on news ser­vice British Pathé’s release of 85,000 pieces of archival film on YouTube, see­ing doc­u­men­tary evi­dence of just the last cen­tu­ry “real­ly makes the past feel like a for­eign country—the weird hair­styles, the way a city street looked, the breath­tak­ing­ly casu­al sex­ism and racism.” (Of course there’s more than enough rea­son to think future gen­er­a­tions will say the same of us.) British Pathé’s archive seems exhaustive—until you see the lat­est dig­i­tized col­lec­tion on YouTube from AP (Asso­ci­at­ed Press) and British Movi­etone, which spans from 1895 to the present and brings us thou­sands more past tragedies, tri­umphs, and hair­styles

This release of “more than 1 mil­lion min­utes” of news, writes Vari­ety, includes archival footage of “major world events such as the 1906 San Fran­cis­co earth­quake, exclu­sive footage of the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor in 1941, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks on the U.S.” And so much more, such as the news­reel above, which depicts Berlin in 1945, even­tu­al­ly get­ting around to doc­u­ment­ing the Pots­dam Con­fer­ence (at 3:55), where Churchill, Stal­in, and Tru­man cre­at­ed the 17th par­al­lel in Viet­nam, dic­tat­ed the terms of the Ger­man occu­pa­tion, and planned the com­ing Japan­ese sur­ren­der. No one at the time could have accu­rate­ly fore­seen the his­tor­i­cal rever­ber­a­tions of these actions.

Anoth­er strange, even uncan­ny piece of film shows us the Eng­lish foot­ball team giv­ing the Nazi salute in 1938 at the com­mence­ment of a game against Ger­many. “That’s shock­ing now,” says Alwyn Lind­say, the direc­tor of AP’s inter­na­tion­al archive, “but it wasn’t at the time.” Films like these have become of much more inter­est since The Sun pub­lished pho­tographs of the roy­al family—including a young Queen Eliz­a­beth II and her uncle Prince (lat­er King, then Duke) Edward VIII—giving Nazi salutes in 1933. Though it was not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial, and the chil­dren of course had lit­tle idea what it sig­ni­fied, it did turn out that Edward (seen here) was a would-be Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor and remained an unapolo­getic sym­pa­thiz­er.

This huge video trove does­n’t just doc­u­ment the grim his­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, of course. As you can see in the AP’s intro­duc­to­ry mon­tage at the top of the post, there is “a world of his­to­ry at your fingertips”—from tri­umphant video like Nel­son Man­de­la’s release from prison, above, to the below film of “Crazy 60s Hats in Glo­ri­ous Colour.” And more or less every oth­er major world event, dis­as­ter, dis­cov­ery, or wide­spread trend you might name from the last 120 or so years.

The archive splits into two YouTube chan­nels: AP offers both his­tor­i­cal and up-to-the-minute polit­i­cal, sports, celebri­ty, sci­ence, and “weird and wacky” videos (with “new con­tent every day”). The British Movi­etone chan­nel is sole­ly his­tor­i­cal, with much of its con­tent com­ing from the 1960s (like those hats, and this video of the Bea­t­les receiv­ing their MBE’s, and oth­er “Beat­le­ma­nia scenes.”)

Movi­etone’s one nod to the present takes the form of “The Archivist Presents,” in which a his­to­ri­an offers quirky con­text on some bit of archival footage, like that above of the Kinks get­ting their hair curled. The com­plete­ly uniron­ic lounge music and casu­al­ly sex­ist nar­ra­tion will make you both smile and wince, as do Ray Davies and com­pa­ny when they see their new hair. Most of the films in this mil­lion min­utes of news footage (and count­ing) tend to elic­it either or both of these two emo­tion­al reactions—joy (or amuse­ment) or mild to intense hor­ror, and watch­ing them makes the past they show us feel para­dox­i­cal­ly more strange and more imme­di­ate at once.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 His­tor­i­cal Films on YouTube

New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion & Radio

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc. 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Animated Introductions to Three Sociologists: Durkheim, Weber & Adorno

in Economics, Education, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology | June 24th, 2015

Is soci­ol­o­gy an art or a sci­ence? Is it phi­los­o­phy? Social psy­chol­o­gy? Eco­nom­ics and polit­i­cal the­o­ry? Sur­vey­ing the great soci­ol­o­gists since the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, one would have to answer “yes” to all of these ques­tions. Soci­ol­o­gists like Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Theodor Adorno con­duct­ed seri­ous schol­ar­ly and social-sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses, and wrote high­ly spec­u­la­tive the­o­ry. Though it may seem like we’re all soci­ol­o­gists now, mak­ing crit­i­cal judg­ments about large groups of peo­ple, the soci­ol­o­gists who cre­at­ed and car­ried on the dis­ci­pline gen­er­al­ly did so with sound evi­dence and well-rea­soned argu­ment. Unlike so much cur­rent knee-jerk com­men­tary, even when they’re wrong they’re still well worth read­ing.

Hav­ing already sur­veyed Marx in his series on Euro-Amer­i­can polit­i­cal philoso­phers, School of Life founder Alain de Bot­ton now tack­les the oth­er three illus­tri­ous names on the list above, start­ing with Durkheim at the top, then Weber above, and Adorno below. The first two fig­ures were con­tem­po­raries of Marx, the third a lat­er inter­preter. Like that beard­ed Ger­man scourge of cap­i­tal­ism, these three—in more mea­sured or pes­simistic ways—levied cri­tiques against the dom­i­nant eco­nom­ic sys­tem. Durkheim took on the prob­lem of sui­cide, Weber the anx­ious reli­gious under­pin­nings of cap­i­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy, and Adorno the con­sumer cul­ture of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s so far, at least, as de Bot­ton’s very cur­so­ry intro­duc­tions get us. As with his oth­er series, this one more or less ropes the thinkers rep­re­sent­ed here into the School of Life’s pro­gram of pro­mot­ing a very par­tic­u­lar, mid­dle class view of hap­pi­ness. And, as with the oth­er series, the thinkers sur­veyed here all seem to more or less agree with de Bot­ton’s own views. Per­haps oth­ers who most cer­tain­ly could have been includ­ed, like W.E.B. Dubois, Jane Addams, or Han­nah Arendt, would offer some very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.

De Bot­ton again makes his points with pithy gen­er­al­iza­tions, num­bered lists, and quirky, cut-out ani­ma­tions, breezi­ly reduc­ing life­times of work to a few obser­va­tions and moral lessons. I doubt Adorno would approach these less-than-rig­or­ous meth­ods char­i­ta­bly, but those new to the field of soci­ol­o­gy or the work of its prac­ti­tion­ers will find here some tan­ta­liz­ing ideas that will hope­ful­ly inspire them to dig deep­er, and to per­haps improve their own soci­o­log­i­cal diag­noses.

Note: For those inter­est­ed, Yale has a free open course on Soci­ol­o­gy called “Foun­da­tions of Mod­ern Social The­o­ry,” which cov­ers most of the fig­ures list­ed above. You can always find it in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein & Sartre Explained with Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tions by The School of Life

Theodor Adorno’s Rad­i­cal Cri­tique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Viet­nam War Protest Move­ment

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Cambridge University to Create a Lego Professorship

in Education | June 24th, 2015

cambridge lego

Image by Julochka/Flickr Com­mons

So it turns out that my two-year old son might be qual­i­fied for a pro­fes­sor­ship at an elite uni­ver­si­ty. No, he’s not some Doo­gie Hows­er-style savant. He just real­ly likes Legos. And Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty – the school of Isaac New­ton, Charles Dar­win and Stephen Hawk­ing – has announced that it’s get­ting ready to cre­ate a Lego pro­fes­sor­ship this fall.

The posi­tion, which is slat­ed to start in Octo­ber 2015, came about fol­low­ing a £4 mil­lion dona­tion from the Lego Foun­da­tion. The Den­mark-based orga­ni­za­tion, which owns 25% of the Lego toy com­pa­ny, states that their mis­sion is to “make chil­dren’s lives bet­ter — and com­mu­ni­ties stronger — by mak­ing sure the fun­da­men­tal val­ue of play is under­stood, embraced and act­ed upon.” The Foun­da­tion already has ties with MIT and Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na, among oth­ers.

Who ever lands the pro­fes­sor­ship will also head the Research Cen­tre on Play in Edu­ca­tion, Devel­op­ment and Learn­ing and will explore the con­nec­tion between learn­ing and play.

The qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job seem remark­ably broad. As the uni­ver­si­ty says: “The can­di­da­ture should be open to all those whose work falls with­in the gen­er­al field of the title of the office.” They don’t, how­ev­er, specif­i­cal­ly men­tion that can­di­dates have to be pot­ty trained. I’m get­ting my son’s resume ready.

You can read Cam­bridge’s back­ground doc­u­men­ta­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Pro­fes­sor Risk” at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Says “One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious”

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Find Cours­es from Cam­bridge in our Col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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