Sunday, November 1, 2009

Has human evolution turned the corner?

A hat tip to Deric Bownds from Mindblog for this cartoon, which he in turn got from the New Yorker:
As a school principal and South African citizen, some experiences I've had, and observations I've made in the past few weeks, makes me believe that we're rapidly devolving.

In a post entitled The educational leader: what else than a social entrepreneur?, Walter Baets from UCT wrote as follows:

"In many aspects, the successful principal is a social entrepreneur. ... A few thoughts of interest of Charles Maisel on what a social entrepreneur is might explain my argument. A social entrepreneur needs to see things differently, start flipping things around. Entrepreneurship is about seeing, seeing the possibilities. In fact, it is all about learning to look at things differently. A social entrepreneur is not in for maximising profit, but for solving a pressing social problem on a population-wide scale. He or she creates."
In a society where common decency and common sense are increasingly rare and where the lowest common denominator has become the norm (bad punning intended), I'm not sure that I'm up to the task.

Fortunately Robert Frost has encouraging words for every discouraged educator:
"The woods are lovely and dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."

2 comments:

  1. And in the same post he denigrates medical science and promotes Ayurvedic "medicine" as an alternative and as a cure to HIV amongst other serious conditions(click on the preventative medicine" link in his post). This is what UCT is now promoting. Clearly not a place that has any medical standing any longer

    Take the time to read the rest of his blog and this is not the only quackery he promotes.

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  2. Thank you, I missed that. I'll follow the link and have another look at the blog.

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