NEW Prestigious Awards: My book of the month goes to @juliagalef’s The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Clearly & Others Don’t, a book with powerful tools for fighting self-deception! 1/9
The book helps rein in the toughest self-deception: motivated reasoning, i.e. realizing when we’re weighting evidence based on what we WANT to be true.
It’s also everything popular nonfiction should be: clear, well-written, thoughtful, funny, & full of stories. 2/9
The author dispels some common misconceptions, like the fact that Abraham Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” was effective, & that one can effectively get out of their bubble just by turning on left-wing or right-wing radio. 3/9
I confess I am so excited about Scout Mindset because it pairs well with my “lab in the looking glass” theory, i.e. the best reason for #freespeech is that it lets you know the world as it is.
Is that confirmation bias & motivated reasoning? Maybe! 4/9
Thank you, @juliagalef for your important book! It’s made me realize how much happier I have been since I fell in love with the unknowability of it all! 5/9
ZERO TWEET: Keep reading for more book recommendations, OR click the link below to see the beta version of my 10 principles for a healthier K-12 system! 0/9
I also have honorable mentions this month! I loved @AdamMGrant’s Think Again, @damonroot’s biography of Frederick Douglass, A Glorious Liberty, & @ericberkowitz4’s history of censorship in the West, Dangerous Ideas.
I’ll be writing a full review of Dangerous Ideas soon! 6/9
For my Prestigious Fats Waller award, I listed the funniest songs by my favorite musician, @beck. Satan Gave Me a Taco, Soul Suckin’ Jerk, Debra, Nicotine & Gravy, Wow, Super Cool, Nitemare Hippy Girl, & of course Loser, with one of the greatest opening lines in music. 7/9
Finally, my Prestigious Jack Kirby award goes to @numberblocks. If you’re a nerd with little nerdlings, it’s perfect! The show taught my five year old math basics up to squaring & cubing numbers! I find myself singing the 100 song ALL THE TIME. 8/9
Next month, 12 book awards enter, 1 book award leaves. Which of the year’s previous winners will walk away with the EXCESSIVELY Prestigious Award? You will decide! Vote at the link below! 9/9
NEW: Catching Up With Coddling Pt 17. Hearing disturbing reports of K-12 programming with no respect for the individuality of students or the diverse points of view of students, I created a beta version of 10 principles for a healthier K-12 system. 1/12
1. No compelled speech, thought, or belief. It is usually bad to tell someone what they cannot say. It is usually far worse to tell someone what they must say, & it is always wrong to tell people what they must think or believe. 2/12
2. Respect for individuality, dissent, and the sanctity of conscience. American First Amendment law is replete with powerful statements about individual uniqueness, and respect for such uniqueness. 3/12
A new “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’”! We’re looking at the effects of bureaucratization on campus. In other words, as colleges evolve into megacorporations, what does that mean for inquiry, education, & #freespeech? 1/21
This is the TENTH part in the series where we revisit the topics in @JonHaidt & my 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” with new data, developments, & caveats. 2/21
In describing the relationship between bureaucratization & the decisions campuses make, we consider three basic frameworks: the narrow corporatism theory, the broader corporatism theory, & the strong corporatism theory. 3/21
THREAD: The winner of my Prestigious Ashurbanipal award for February 2021 is @mgurri’s prophetic book “The Revolt of the Public,” specifically the extended 2018 edition. 1/10
Recommended to me by @kmele, it has had a profound effect on my thinking on the state of the world.
The book introduces two key concepts I’ve incorporated into my “modular argument” for #freespeech. 2/10
1st: “Gurri’s negation,” his observation that the explosion of social media & information technology has tremendous power to tear down institutions, ideas, & people (e.g. cancel culture), but, as of yet, very little ability to create or sustain. 3/10
THREAD: This week, we got an email from someone who found our Catching Up With “Coddling” (CUWC) series on thecoddling.com & asked why we stopped the series after 2 articles. Concerning, b/c we’ve published 8 of them so far! 1/12 cc: @JonHaidt
It was our fault that the articles were not as easy to find as they should have been, so we’re making navigation tweaks with the help of FIRE's great web dev @jpmerig. If YOU didn’t know about them, read on! 2/12
CUWC part 1: Introduction. It, well, introduces the series, identifying the trends we’ll update with new information we’ve learned since the book was released. 3/12
THREAD: For some fun TGIF fare let’s highlight some great @TheFIREorg gifs (TGIGIFs?) made by our AMAZING comms staff! (All of which are available through the gif button on Twitter & Facebook!) 1/8
I LOVE this animation of the logo for my blog, the Eternally Radical Idea! It salutes 3 once-radical ideas — the earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun, the structure of hydrogen AND Doctor Manhattan’s iconic symbol! 2/8
This adorable gif is from our Speech Code of the Month for February 2021. We feel like we’re stuck in a Groundhog’s Day-style time loop, having complained about this civility policy @JohnsHopkins since 2006! 3/8
THREAD: In our 8th installment of Catching Up With Coddling, our series updating trends @JonHaidt and I covered in Coddling of the American Mind, we’re covering free play & childhood independence with help from @FreeRangeKids & @DianeRedleaf. 1/10
Since 2018, studies have continued to confirm the positive effects of free play on childhood development. For example, Feb 2020 meta-analysis of 16 studies showed a variety of benefits of outdoor free play vs structured indoor play 2/10
A 2020 study on an elementary school that implemented @LetGrowOrg Play Club where students participate in unstructured free play found that participants reported better moods & greater readiness to learn. 3/10