Paul A. Wagner

Socio-sexual education: a practical study in formal thinking and teachable moments

Sex education is almost as sensitive a topic in public schooling as is the imposition of high-stakes testing. Both typically claim to be value-free contributions to the development of the students cognitive, psychological and sometimes even moral maturity. Ironically each seems to short-change students in all three areas of development. The focus of attention in this article is that sex education represents an extraordinary ‘teachable moment’ to show students the effectiveness of the most modern tools for solving problems; namely, game theory and decision theory more generally. The fruitfulness of these teachable moments is not limited to game theory and decision theory alone. However, if these teachable moments can be utilized in highly mathematized fields, there is no doubt an abundance of teachable moments potentially bringing other disciplines together in seamless fashion with sex education as well. In principle, sex education addresses issues students will confront daily for the rest of their lives. Typically students seem to waffle their way through sexually relevant encounters driven both by the allure of reward and the fear of negative consequences. Allure and fear are relevant emotions of which students should be mindful when considering the consequences of any proposed action or principle in any aspect of social life. Considering such things in a shoot-from-the-hip fashion can be destructive to both individual and social purpose in social encounters of any kind, but most especially in sexual engagements of various kinds. By utilizing elements of decision theory, students can be shown practical applications for the mathematical formatting of difficult problems of a very practical sort. This develops critical thinking in the truest and most responsible sense.

The Autistic Society and Its Classrooms

Abstract Autistic means a subject has limited affect or may be without affect altogether. Though traditionally individuals are described as autistic, the authors find it increasingly apparent that American society is becoming autistic as a whole, as citizens are desensitized to needs of neighbors near and far, losing the commensurate loyalty of being in community. This essay suggests that classrooms must be on the front line of challenging the effects of an increasingly autistic society.

A new approach to teaching forms of reasoning to the gifted

Discussion focuses on those problems caused by the isolation of studies in logic from studies in education. The authors recommend a taxonomic distinction in formal inference‐making routines that has long been recognized in the field of logic. The authors illustrate how this taxonomic distinction can be usefully employed in the classroom to help children think more precisely and to think about thinking more deliberately.

The Great Conversation and the Ethics of Inclusion.

Hispanic and Latino Americans want security from terrorists as much as all other Americans. A protective membrane surrounding the country that is too porous is of little use and constitutes a danger to residents, both citizens and non-citizens alike. This much is uncontroversial. Similarly, most American citizens truly benefit from the work product of undocumented workers. Presumably, some case can be made that most undocumented workers see themselves as better off than if they had remained in their country of origin. Things become controversial when an attempt is made to balance resident safety against resident desire for inexpensive labor. The controversy inevitably escalates when consideration is given to the fairness of wages paid to undocumented workers. These moral issues cannot be ignored. However, as important as these issues are, the present argument addresses more specifically the duties educators have towards learners and potential learners regardless of their current citizenship status. The argument acknowledges that all citizens of a nation have certain duties to that nation but then the argument concludes by pointing out that some ageless professions like medicine and pedagogy have special duties transcending any immediate and transient duties imposed by nationalistic affiliation. Specifically in the case of education, all pedagogues have a duty to do nothing to exclude any willing participant from participation in the Great Conversation of Humankind.

Games, logic and giftedness

Gaming is one method for teaching formal thinking processes that is particularly well suited to the gifted student.

Total Quality Management: A Plan for Optimizing Human Potential?

Israel Scheffler’s ground-breaking essay, On Human Potential, deserves to be more widely known among educational policy analysts, especially in light of the popularity in educationist circles of W.E. Deming’s organizational philosophy known as “Total Quality Management”. In what follows, I argue that the heuristical value of Deming’s perscriptions are entailed in Scheffler’s On Human Potential. More importantly, I argue, where Deming’s work falls short, especially in being naive about the human condition, Scheffler’s analysis provides a foundation for management theory in education that insures the flourishing of an optimal number of contributing participants. In fashioning these ideas, Scheffler brings pioneering thinking to the emerging fields of management studies generally and educational policy specifically.

Review of Steven Stich's “From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science”

The amateurish psychological analyses our mothers make and the study of social psychology must each be abandoned by those interested in developing a truly scientific study of cognition. Similarly, any school of psychology which refers to the referents or semantic elements of mentalistic terms must be dismissed as unlikely to contribute to the science of cognition. This would include such additional areas of study as developmental psychology and gestalt psychology. These somewhat audacious claims follow either directly or indirectly from the pronouncements of Stephen Stichs much heralded book, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Stich is not fond of mentalistic accounts of the psychological domain. Curiously enough, however, he is equally disenchanted with the attempts of behavioral psychologists to account for the nature of human behavior. Having disparaged the attempts of most major schools of psychology one wonders what Stich does permit as a legitimate approach for the scientific study of cognitive processes-assuming of course we still want a scientific study of psychology! Surely, even generally critical philosophers and scientists would applaud the efforts of clinical psychologists who are intent on relieving patients of their mental afflictions. However, these same philosophers and scientists may be equally eager to dismiss the claim of psychologists who describe their field of study as a science. Psychology, these critics say, is not really a science, but rather a mere ideology of human well-being. The only real science of human nature they insist is neurophysiology. Stich is not such a critic, nor is he an advocate of a non-psychological reductivist neuroscience. He believes there can be a scientific study of human nature, a sort of science of the mind. Stich describes the science of the mind as cognitive science. However, before the reader gets any hopes up, Stich disclaims association