text: ◆Summary Welcome to Gedonelune Royal Magic Academy! This is the most prominent yet, mysterious academy in wizardry world, with full of fantasy, adventure, and love romance! You, as a provisional student, learn about magic, and use of magical items as you meet the unique classmates, dormmates, professors and magical creatures. You challenge the trials either to become an official student or the Prefect, the student representative. Meanwhile, you face the dozens of mysteries, such as the vasty underground labyrinth, revealing of the Night Class, the spring of unicorns and so on.... You unveil the mysteries with your love interests, which is the key to deciding your fate. Those thrilling and adventurous stories will never cease to surprise you. Now, get your wand ready for the incantation! The wizarding world awaits you! ◆NEWS Wizardess Heart welcomed the 4th year. The app is consist of six seasons with total of fifteen handsome wizards. Adorable magical creatures make appearances in each season; they will surely make your academy life more enjoyabale and exciting. ◆Features◆ ●FREE to download. ●FREE Story Tickets to be given. ●Beautiful illustrations and great music. ●Many different options available for boyfriends. ●Ranking system to compete your look. ●Story endings vary with your choice. ●Amazing selection of avatar items. ●Fun events and special rewards. ◆About Us◆ NTT Solmare is a company based in Osaka, Japan. We strive to make the best dating sim games. If you like romance novels, cute boys, and/or anime then you will love our games. Our Shall we date? titles have over 23 million downloads worldwide – try one of our FREE games today to find out why we are so popular!


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Frank Schaeffer fills us in on the world of evangelical child discipline for the glory of god, otherwise known as child abuse.
There's the Texas judge, there are Michael and Debi Pearl, there's James Dobson, and there's Bill Gothard.
And it is not just individuals who are abused. Whole "Christian" organizations are involved. According to a report by Channel 13 WTHR Indianapolis (and many other media sources over the years),
"At first glance, the Bill Gothard-founded and run Indianapolis Training Center looks like an ordinary conference hotel. But some say there are dark secrets inside. "They're not here to play," Mark Cavanaugh, an ITC staffer tells a mother on hidden-camera video. 'They're here because they've been disobedient, they've been disrespectful.'" [Read more…]


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Paperback, 144 pages
Released: June 2004
Samir Amin's ambitious new book argues that the ongoing American project to dominate the world through military force has its roots in European liberalism, but has developed certain features of liberal ideology in a new and uniquely dangerous form. Where European political culture since the French Revolution has given a central place to values of equality, the American state has developed to serve the interests of capital alone, and is now exporting this model throughout the world. American imperialism, Amin argues, will be far more barbaric than earlier forms, pillaging natural resources and destroying the lives of the poor.
The Liberal Virus examines the ways in which the American model is being imposed on the world, and outlines its economic and political consequences. It shows how both citizenship and class consciousness are diluted in "low-intensity democracy" and argues instead for democratization as an ongoing process—of fundamental importance for human progress—rather than a fixed constitutional formula designed to support the logic of capital accumulation.
In a panoramic overview, Amin examines the objectives and outcomes of American policy in the different regions of the world. He concludes by outlining the challenges faced by those resisting the American project today: redefining European liberalism on the basis of a new compromise between capital and labor, re-establishing solidarity among the people of the South, and reconstructing an internationalism that serves the interests of regions that are currently divided against each other.
Amin is both a real-world social scientist and a revolutionary socialist.
- The Liberal Vision of Society
- The Ideological and Para-Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism
- The Consequences: Really Existing Globalized Liberalism
- The Origins of Liberalism
- The Challenge of Liberalism Today


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The Invisible Wounds of War
Charleston Post and Courier
15 September 2013
Special Report: The Invisible Wounds of War
Blast Wave
by Tony Bartelme
An exploding bomb unleashes a nearly invisible wave of pressure that hits as hard as a boxer's glove. Nearly 300,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered traumatic brain injuries. This is a story about invisible injuries, what sports taught the military about concussions, and what bomb hunters are teaching us in return.
April 2010, Helmand Province: Air Force Staff Sgt. Jonathan "Bax" Baxley is in an armored troop carrier, strapped in the gunner's turret. His fingers warm the handle of an M-240 machine gun; his eyes scan the Afghan plains for Taliban and IEDs.
From his perch, Baxley sees a shift in the light, thick with dust. The late-afternoon sun has lost its punch, so now everything around his convoy is a hundred shades of orange. Looking right, Baxley sees mountains. To his left, a group of mud-brick homes, and off in the distance, a dry riverbed with a live rocket-propelled grenade that he needs to disarm.
Bad time to be out here; insurgents are fair-weather fighters. They typically strike in the cool of the morning, or when the worst of the day's heat has passed, like now. Baxley talks through a headset to a medic below who's on his first tour. Small talk. What do you think about Afghanistan? Having fun yet?
Baxley is with Charleston's 628th Civil Engineering Squad, 24 years old on this afternoon, solidly built. When he was growing up on James Island, family friends called him "Tiny" because he grew faster than his peers. But now his open and wide face makes him look younger than his age, boyish. Except for his brown eyes. They're steady, like a batter looking at a pitcher.
He'd played baseball at James Island High School, always a team player. He was the middle child in the family, the peacemaker, calm and helpful, the one who asked his mom, "Can I stir?" when she made things in the kitchen. Coaches liked his steel and sent him in to pitch when things were falling apart.
Calm on the surface, sure. But he was also the kid who waited extra at amusement parks for the roller coaster's front seat, who threw everything he had into driveway basketball with his best friend, Ryan Easterby.
Yes, he needed adrenaline and competition in his life, so after high school, when someone said he would make a good bomb hunter, his ears perked up. He talked to Air Force recruiters about EOD, explosive ordnance disposal, watched videos about EOD "operators" at work, and the fuse was lit.
You had to be smart to disable a bomb, unflinching under pressure, a team player. You had to think like a terrorist, then beat their booby traps or die trying. You had periods of waiting and tension, then bursts of activity. Just like baseball.
Except you can't drop the ball when you work around bombs. Baxley had seen the stakes on his first deployment to Iraq in 2009. He was assigned to an Army unit clearing roads of improvised explosive devices. On one mission, a troop carrier in front of him hit an IED, flipping the vehicle like a pancake, crushing and killing the soldier in the turret.
Now, a year later, Baxley is in the turret, assigned to a Marine combat unit. Around his face is a shemagh, an Afghan wrap that keeps him from choking on dust from the two trucks in front. His convoy veers off a dirt road and follows a cattle path to avoid mines. The live RPG is up ahead. Then, all at once, motion, noise, dust, smoke.
It's easy to make a bomb. Just get some fertilizer, aluminum powder, gasoline and mix it in a jug. The Taliban often use yellow palm-oil containers. Now, with a 9-volt battery and wires, hook it to a small explosive to make a detonator. Close the circuit and let the chemistry begin.
The detonator fires, pumping energy toward that mix you just made. In a fraction of a second, this injection of energy causes the molecules in the jug to go berserk and generate a blast wave of gas and heat. The blast wave expands at 900 mph or more, usually too fast to see with the naked eye.
In physics, actions trigger reactions, and as the wave speeds outward, it leaves a vacuum in its wake. Air molecules fill this void, creating a powerful backward-moving force called a blast wind. Blast wave, blast wind; a punch to the front and one from behind.
Unless blocked, these blast forces easily rip apart tissues, especially something as thin and fragile as an eardrum. When they hit body organs filled with air or fluids, the effect is like someone stomping on balloons. Lungs collapse, spleens compress, bladders explode. Blast waves can even affect bone marrow.
After a blast, your body may look perfectly fine on the outside, but your insides might have been blown to pieces. The same goes for your brain, pulsating with electricity, blood and thoughts.
A hail of bullets
Baxley feels the front of the troop carrier rise 45 degrees, then slam down, like an alligator snapping its snout. Sixteen tons of metal and flesh hit the sun-baked dirt. Dust blocks his vision. He checks himself. Everything intact. "Everyone OK? Everyone OK?"
Then, from a hill about 500 yards away, a blast of bullets hits the convoy. Ambush. Physics also applies to war, and the Marines react by pumping waves of gunfire back at the hill. The air around Baxley is filled with noise from machine guns and the pings of bullets hitting the troop carrier, until an American helicopter gunship charges in and the insurgents slink away.
Inside the troop carrier, Baxley and the three others take stock. Baxley's ears ring but don't hurt. The IED exploded closest to the driver, underneath the front tire. But everyone is alive, though the driver has a nasty bruise on his leg where he mashed the door handle. The blast shredded the vehicle's undercarriage, but that's supposed to happen.
They were in an MRAP, a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle with a V-shaped hull. Like a ship plowing through water, the V shape deflects blast forces up and away from those inside. Had they been in a flat-bottom Humvee, he and his buddies probably would be dead.
They stay in the truck for about 20 minutes as the Marines set up defensive positions so Baxley can get to work. Insurgents often plant other mines around an IED, and it's Baxley's job to walk through this potential kill zone with a hand-held mine detector and make sure the area is safe.
Alone, Baxley climbs out. He can't use a bomb suit because it was blown up — probably wouldn't have used it anyway, too cumbersome. He grabs the detector and starts scanning the ground around the convoy for explosives. He's an easy target for a sniper, but he has to focus. Miss a mine and you could lose a buddy. Something has to be done, so you do it, he thinks.
The Marines cover him, training their machine guns in every direction, a 360-degree circle of fire. When Baxley finishes, he calls all clear. The first guy out of the carrier sees Baxley and motions toward his head. Blood is running down Baxley's right ear.
Invisible wounds
The human brain floats in an imperfect container. Beneath the skull, a thin cushion of cerebrospinal fluid protects your lobes from shocks. The skull and fluid cushion are good for minor blows, but if you smack your head really hard, your brain, about three pounds in all, will slosh back and forth, like a sponge in a bucket.
The brain has a forest of blood vessels, some as large as your finger, others smaller than the finest strand of hair. In a severe blow, the brain's shape will change, stretching and tearing these strands. The brain will swell, and because the skull has little spare room, the blood and inflamed brain have nowhere to go.
Its cavities fill and compress. If the swelling is severe, the brain might crush itself. As a last resort, neurosurgeons sometimes remove a piece of the skull to let the brain spill out, like dough rising from a pan. Then after the swelling has gone down, they stitch the skull back together.
The brain's container has other flaws: In some areas, it's as thin as a cracker. Worse, behind your nose are bony protrusions. Inconveniently near these bones are bundles of fibers, nerve cells and brain tissue called "white matter."
Named because white insulation surrounds them, white matter connects different neural networks to one another, including the ones that manage judgment and memory. Cut those connections, and you might lose your ability to remember what happened yesterday, or control your anger when a car cuts you off.
A blast wave's effect on the brain has been compared to a baker rolling a pin over dough, but the damage is hidden, invisible to all but the most advanced forms of medical imagery, such as computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET).
A brain has 100 billion neurons that are connected in thousands of networks. Advanced scans can now show how blast forces alter the brain's chemistry on a cellular level, causing neurotransmitters to flood the brain's wiring. Circuits go haywire; you feel confused, delirious. Or they shut down completely, and your mind goes dark.
A blast wave often carries with it rocks, metal and other shrapnel, and in past wars, it was these flying projectiles that did in many soldiers. Now, with advances in emergency medicine and lightweight body armor, more troops are surviving these injuries. But body armor and helmets also are imperfect protectors. They may stop bullets and shrapnel, but not the jarring forces of the blast wave itself.
Sucker punch
Four hours after the explosion, Baxley is back at Patrol Base Buji, a ring of sand barriers overlooking a putty-colored mountain range. It's in one of the most remote areas of Helmand, deep in Taliban territory. It has no significant medical equipment, but it does have a Navy medic, who checks Baxley's ears. The medic tells him the blast pressure tore his eardrums, but they'll heal.
The medic asks Baxley questions designed to diagnose a concussion. Baxley thinks he does fine on the test, but the medic thinks otherwise and tells him he has a low-grade concussion.
The next morning, Baxley wakes up feeling like a boxer has pummeled every inch of his body. He gets ibuprofen and Tylenol from the medic, but the pills barely make a dent in the pain. The medic asks him more concussion questions, then clears him for patrols the next day. That's a relief, headache or not. He's there to do a job, not sit on the bench.
Three days after his truck was blown up, Baxley is in another convoy when someone spots an IED on a curve in the road. The vehicles stop, and he unloads a 115-pound robot. Using joy sticks, he sends the robot to the IED and disarms it, textbook. But as he's loading the robot back into the truck, a driver makes a mistake; he's not supposed to move forward when people are outside their vehicles, unprotected, but he does, rolling over an IED they had missed, 50 yards from Baxley.
The blast wave hits him like a linebacker. His knees buckle. He falls to the ground, his arms and legs drained of strength. "Bax, are you all right?" someone yells.
Muscle memory kicks in. "Stay in the truck!" Baxley yells back. He checks himself. OK, no shrapnel wounds. He remembers his ears and wipes them. No blood.
The blast destroys the troop carrier, but once again the V-shaped hull saves everyone inside. Back at the base, Baxley goes to the medic. Another test, another concussion. "Could have been a lot worse," the medic tells him.
Baxley isn't complaining. His head pounds, and his ears will ring for weeks. But this isn't a football game; it's an increasingly violent war in a forward base surrounded by roads filled with IEDs. You're alive. What's a headache when you've dodged bombs?
After another day off, he's back with the Marines, who have a new rule that you get extra leave when your convoy has been blown up three times in a certain time period. Marines being Marines, they root for another IED blast: "One more! One more!"
Repeated blows
Is one more blow to the head too much? You can find answers in sports, especially boxing. You can see it in a punch-drunk fighter's trembling hands, his slurring words. You could see it in Sugar Ray Robinson, perhaps boxing's greatest, who died of dementia, penniless. And in Jerry Quarry, who spent the last years of his life unable to recognize his parents or children and had a brain his neurologist compared to "a grapefruit that has been repeatedly dropped."
Doctors had studied punch-drunk boxers since the late 1920s, but it wasn't until the early 1980s that researchers truly saw what repeated blows did to a boxer's brain. Using new CT and PET imaging machines, they scanned boxers' brains for abnormalities, which they soon found.
One researcher in 1983 took CT scans of 40 former boxers and found signs of brain damage in more than half. A 1983 report in Sports Illustrated, "Too Many Punches, Too Little Concern," generated calls for boxing reform, and in 1984 the American Medical Association demanded an outright ban.
Amid this wave of concern, David Hovda landed a tough assignment. Hovda had founded UCLA's Brain Injury Research Center in Los Angles, and in the early 1990s, Hovda got a call from Jose Sulaiman, the head of the World Boxing Council. Sulaiman wanted to know: Was there a way to decrease brain injuries in a sport where people were paid to knock each other's blocks off?
Hovda is an imposing man, 6 feet 2 inches tall. In junior high school he was a linebacker and sometimes fired up teammates by banging his head against lockers. Early in his career, he grew fascinated by the brain's mechanics and chemistry. Why, he asked himself, couldn't you open the skull like the hood of a car and fix the wiring?
At UCLA, he had the technology to open that hood. The clinic also happened to be across the street from the football team's practice field, and one day, the sideline doctor brought in a linebacker with a concussion. Hovda and his colleagues took PET scans of the player's brain chemistry, along with another patient in a deep coma from a car accident. When the scans were ready, someone handed him the football player's results.
"I looked at it and said, 'You gave me the wrong one,' " Hovda recalled, thinking the scans belonged to the comatose patient. But it wasn't a mistake. The brain scans of the linebacker, who could walk and talk just fine, were remarkably similar to those of the motionless patient with the coma.
For Hovda, this was proof of something he'd seen in animal studies: In severe and relatively mild concussions, brain cells shut down and burn enormous amounts of glucose, like drained batteries getting a recharge. The good news was that the brain healed itself if you gave the cells time, as eventually happened to the football player. The bad news was that brain cells in this recharging state were particularly defenseless. Another blow to the head could knock them out for good.
Hovda's work and other emerging research about the dangers of repetitive concussions began to shape emotional debates about boxing and other sports, particularly football. As with boxers, prominent NFL players were falling apart in their retirements.
"Iron" Mike Webster had been one of the best centers in the NFL, a Hall of Famer who won four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers. But after he retired in 1990, he lived out of his pickup truck and slept in train stations. When he died at age 50, doctors found he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the same disease seen in punch-drunk boxers.
Former Chicago Bears star Dave Duerson also had CTE when he shot himself in the chest in 2011, leaving a note that his brain be donated to Boston University for research.
Hovda thought this new body of evidence could help save lives, or possibly prevent former athletes from living out their retirements in a fog of dementia. He told boxing leaders how to identify fighters who had their bells rung too hard; he urged them to stop fights earlier and keep fighters from sparring too soon after tough bouts.
His work captured the attention of NFL players, and he told their doctors about the importance of keeping players with concussions off the field until their brains fully healed, even if they said they were fine. "Athletes, just like those in the military, do a good job of lying," Hovda said. "They say, 'Sure, coach, I can go back in.' "
Presence of abnormal
Baxley's 2010 deployment at Patrol Base Buji is a blur of combat and explosions. The war's kinetics have shifted. The coalition's troop surge is well underway, and the insurgents' reaction is to plant more IEDs than ever. They're burying them in vegetable fields, cramming them into road culverts, booby-trapping pomegranate groves; they're making new kinds of IEDs that fire jets of plasma at 5 miles per second, melting holes in armor so copper slugs can fly through.
The number of IED attacks has tripled from presurge days to more than 40 a day. On average, six troops a day are being killed or seriously injured in IED blasts.
Baxley and other troops don't talk about whether they'll get blown up, but when. And not just at Patrol Base Buji. West of Baxley's base, Staff Sgt. Douglas Ryan, another Air Force operator with Charleston's 628th EOD unit, gets blown up three times. And Ryan knows a Marine EOD operator who was disabling an IED when a mortar round landed nearby. The blast forces blew the Marine away from the IED, then a second mortar round landed by him, blowing him back toward the IED, which exploded.
Somehow the Marine survived, but Ryan remembers seeing him a week later, the stunned look still etched in the Marine's face.
Economics favor the insurgents; for less than $30, a bomb-maker can take out a $500,000 MRAP. The U.S. military is pouring more than $60 billion into mine-resistant vehicles and anti-IED technology. But technology goes only so far.
Hunting bombs is personal; you have to get inside a bomb-maker's head, study his tactics, then adjust. Some nights at Patrol Base Buji, messengers from the village come with locations of newly planted IEDs. Sometimes Baxley and other EOD operators in the region get tricked and the IEDs really are 300 yards in front of where the snitches said they would be, traps.
Baxley and others at the base constantly are on guard for the uneasy feeling that something is amiss, what his British EOD counterparts call the "presence of abnormal, absence of normal." What was that blue jug on the road the day before? Shouldn't there be more people in the fields at this time of day? Miss a sign, and you could roll over a pressure plate. Which happens anyway. During one 10-day stretch, 13 vehicles in Baxley's unit get blown up.
Connecting the dots
Presence of abnormal, absence of normal. As Baxley and other EOD operators scoured roads for signs of bombs, researchers in Boston also were hunting for abnormalities, though their landscape was the brains of dead athletes.
For several years, Ann McKee, a professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University, had built a collection of tissues of former NFL players and other athletes, including Dave Duerson, the Chicago Bears defensive back who committed suicide when he was 50 years old.
In her lab, she stained slides of these tissues brown to bring out damage from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This coloring helped reveal how brains with CTE had tangled strands of "tau," a protein that helps brain cells communicate with one another.
If you had too many tangled tau proteins, then your neural networks failed. When enough of these networks went down, you showed signs of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
One day, Lee Goldstein, a medical researcher at BU's School of Medicine and College of Engineering, walked into her office, saw the slides and brown stains and all but shouted, "It's the physics!"
By that, Goldstein meant that violent back-and-forth movements might be the source of these tau protein tangles, whether it was from an IED's blast or a linebacker's hit. He called it the "bobblehead effect," and with McKee and a team of researchers, they set out to test their hypothesis.
First, they found brain tissues of four athletes in their teens and 20s with documented cases of concussions before their deaths; three played football and one was a professional wrestler. Next, they acquired brain tissues from four military veterans; three had been exposed to IED blasts and the fourth had a history of multiple concussions. Finally, they analyzed tissues from people who had no known concussions.
And there it was, in brown and white: The soldiers' and young athletes' tissues were filled with tangles of tau proteins, while the brains of those without concussions had almost none. It was the strongest evidence yet that veterans exposed to IED blast forces had the potential to develop CTE, the same condition that caused boxer Jerry Quarry and football player Dave Duerson to lose their minds.
"The point is that rather than getting hit by a 300-pound linebacker, you're getting hit by compressed gas that's going hundreds of miles an hour," Goldstein said.
But Goldstein and McKee had more questions: Was this damage caused by something within the blast wave itself? Or was it the physics: the intense oscillation from blast forces?
To find out, they placed mice in 27-foot-long aluminum tubes and blasted compressed air at them to simulate blast forces. Some mice were strapped tight so their heads wouldn't move. Later, when they looked at the mice's brains, they found the tightly strapped mice fared well, while the others had brain injuries — the bobblehead effect in action.
Their study made international headlines when it was published in 2012. It was one of the first to link sports to IED blast forces, and soon Goldstein and McKee were getting one letter and email after another from troops and their families. "They said, 'Thank you for telling me I'm not crazy,' " Goldstein recalled. "Parents said we knew there was something wrong with my son. He wasn't the same when he came back. Now you've explained why."
And yet, even as Goldstein, Hovda and other researchers revealed how repeated concussions could lead to lifelong health problems, top military leaders had missed the presence of something abnormal happening to the brains of tens of thousands of troops.
The shift
In 2008, a tough-talking Army general named Peter Chiarelli was promoted to vice chief of staff, the Army's second-in-command. On the fourth day of his new job, someone handed Chiarelli a chart outlining the types of injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq. One number stood out: roughly 36 percent had traumatic brain injuries or post-traumatic stress.
"I had spent two tours in Iraq and quite frankly I didn't know what traumatic brain injury was," Chiarelli recalled. "TBI to me was a concussion, and a concussion was my football coach telling me when I got dinged, that I should just shake it off and get back in the game and I would be fine."
Chiarelli learned about Hovda's work, and in the spring of 2009 invited him to dinner at his home. Joining them was Gen. James Amos, then-assistant commandant of the Marine Corps. Hovda gave his pitch about the brain's vulnerability when recharging after a severe blow. He told them why it was important to take football players off the field after concussions so their brains could regain their chemical and metabolic balance. He said soldiers needed time too, or they could end up with long-term damage, just like the boxers and football players.
"They looked at me and said, 'We've never heard this before,' " Hovda recalled.
An explosion needs a spark, and Hovda proved to be the flint. Hovda's concussion imagery was "a real eye-opener," Chiarelli said. "We could show a kid that his football coach was wrong, that when he was concussed, there was a change in his brain. It got at the stigma associated with something you couldn't see. Now you could see it; you could show a concussed brain, and how it shuts down."
Moved by Hovda's warnings, Chiarelli and Amos summoned the Defense Department's top doctors, psychologists and neurologists to meet with Hovda the next day at the Pentagon. Hovda spoke for 15 minutes. Then came the blow back.
Some called his research "bad medicine." Voices rose. One said it wasn't clear that concussions were that dangerous. Another worried that if you told soldiers they were "brain injured," they would develop symptoms to fit the diagnoses, like hypochondriacs.
"We heard all this bickering," said Chiarelli, who later dubbed it the "food fight." "You would stick a hypothesis on a table with 15 people and you would get 16 answers, and someone would contradict himself by the time we got around the table. So Jim (Amos) and I stormed out of the meeting. We were disgusted."
So disgusted that they quickly formed a panel of the nation's top traumatic brain injury experts, but allowed only one doctor from the Army to participate. Within two days, the group came up with new concussion rules: If you're within about 50 yards of a blast, or lose consciousness, you'll be screened for a concussion. Fail this test, and you'll be sent to a concussion-restoration unit.
Within months, the Army had these rules in place across the world. Other branches followed, yet the military still had plenty of ground to make up.
Special "gray teams," named after the gray matter in the brain, were dispatched to Afghanistan, where they found that most medical workers didn't know how to properly do a basic concussion test, known as a MACE, short for "military acute concussion evaluation."
In 2011, the military began awarding Purple Hearts for soldiers who suffered concussions but hadn't lost consciousness, paving the way for some to get VA treatments. (Previously, soldiers had to be knocked out cold.)
The military also pumped $40 million into ANAM, short for Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, a controversial computer test to identify people who have suffered concussions, a test the Army's surgeon general called no better than a "coin flip," and Chiarelli said was "horrible, but probably the best we have."
Last year, President Barack Obama unveiled a Defense Department and VA plan to spend $100 million on research into TBI and post-traumatic stress, a sum that didn't impress Chiarelli.
Chiarelli retired last year and now leads One Mind, a nonprofit dedicated to cures for TBI and other brain diseases. "I don't want to hear about how we're spending a hundred million dollars. It's a drop in the bucket."
The stakes go beyond the battlefield. Every year, more than 3 million Americans suffer head injuries. Knowledge gained from new discoveries about military-related blast forces could help doctors treat children hurt in playground accidents and people with debilitating diseases, Chiarelli said. "Research is showing that TBI is connected to dementia, that it's connected to post-traumatic stress, to Lou Gehrig's disease, to Parkinson's," he said. "The real sad part of this is that you'll be writing stories 10 years from now about the large number of people with TBI who developed early onset Parkinson's and other diseases."
The last blast
April 2012, Baxley is deployed again in Afghanistan, his third tour in four years, and glad to be back. He's married now and loves fishing and playing softball when he's home. But like many of his fellow EOD operators, he loves the adrenaline, camaraderie and sense of purpose of destroying materials designed to hurt others.
Early in this tour, he's with a team doing a controlled blast of an IED, videotaping from a troop carrier's turret. When they detonate the IED, another one hidden 40 feet away explodes. The blast wave hits hard, and he feels a wave of disorientation.
When he looks around, things in his vision leave comet-like trails. His team leader is Tech Sgt. Jarrod Mills of Charleston's 315th Airlift Wing. Baxley tells Mills, "I think I need a MACE test."
Over their deployments, Baxley and others in EOD circles had seen the military change its stance toward concussions. "In prior deployments, the MACE test was given only for people who really had their bells rung," Mills said. "Now, MACE is a huge thing."
So after that hidden IED blows up, Mills pulls out a set of cards with MACE questions and gives Baxley the test. Baxley chuckles, thinking: I've been blown up multiple times; if you can ask for a MACE test, you probably don't need it. He passes, but he has headaches and nausea, as if he's tipsy and hung over all at once, though the symptoms ease after a few days.
Soon he's back in the field, and he's eager to be part of what comes next. After so many years of clearing IEDs from roads, he's with a British reconnaissance team going after the bomb-makers themselves. Instead of playing defense, they're on offense.
In the hours after midnight, they climb into helicopters that drop them into nearby villages. They do door-to-door searches for caches, then clear out as the sun rises and they lose the advantage of their night-vision gear.
On one mission they discover a bomb factory, and Baxley sees the pressure plates that detonate when vehicles roll over them, hundreds of those yellow palm-oil jugs. The team gathers evidence for military intelligence analysts, then blows the cache into the night sky.
On another mission, they're still on the ground at dawn when insurgents attack. His team takes cover behind a wall. They set up a fighting position. Suddenly, they're hit from behind. An RPG flies toward them and rams into a wall about 20 feet away. Baxley feels scattering rocks cut his hand and neck, and the pressure of the blast wave against his face.
Wave of wounds
Now it's summer, 2013. Baxley is 28 years old, back in Charleston, training at the Air Force Base and responding to occasional bomb-squad calls from local law enforcement agencies. He remembers that last RPG.
"We were behind a wall, a mud hut. A couple of those (RPGs) came through. It was a really loud crack, and I definitely felt the blast pressure. It was really hot. You have all this rapidly expanding compressed gases moving at you faster than the speed of sound, and right behind that is the negative air pressure, that actually moves backward. All that air and fluid in your body goes with it. So it feels like being hit by a train, almost a whiplash action and reaction."
They fought their way out of trouble, but Baxley and his EOD colleagues know better than most that you can't escape physics, that when a blast wave meets your brain, something gives.
"My wife noticed something, especially when I came back after the last two deployments. My temper was a little short, but I don't know if that had anything to do with the blasts. It could just be the stress of coming back. I wouldn't say I'm worried, but I know that I've changed. My memory is worse. I couldn't tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I've found ways to cope. To remember some things, I try to remember what else happened at that time, and connect it some way. It's a lot of 'I know the answer, but I can't get it out.' The knowledge is there. It just doesn't come out as fast. I used to be awesome at 'Jeopardy.' I suck at it now."
During his deployments, Baxley has taken out more than 100 IEDs. All told, he's disposed of more than 100,000 pounds of explosives, 15 times as much as the 1995 bomb that brought down the federal building in Oklahoma City. He's clearly had his bell rung, but he hasn't had any brain scans or been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.
He said he took the ANAM computer test last fall after he returned from his third tour. "I failed the first one, then they called me back three days later, and it was the exact same test. I passed this time. I don't know if that had anything to do with it."
Like many football players and athletes, Baxley and other EOD operators know how adrenaline washes through the brain when the stakes are high, that victory can be measured in inches, seconds and guts, that disarming bombs takes practice and teamwork. A lone wolf like the EOD operator portrayed in the 2008 movie "The Hurt Locker" would "never last in EOD," he says. "But the camaraderie is amazing. You can go anywhere in the world and see an EOD tech, and you'll click, have a beer and talk for hours. And the rewards — it's the most rewarding job I've ever done."
Since 2000, more than 270,000 service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. Experts say thousands remain undiagnosed, and that the number may be as high as 400,000. No one's sure how many of these troops will develop long-term health problems, though Chiarelli and others expect it to be on the scale of a tsunami.
No matter the number, it's clear that Baxley and thousands of troops like him are part of a massive experiment: Many are alive despite being a few feet away from explosions that, if not for a deftly shaped piece of metal, would have killed them a few years before. And yet their brains have been subjected to abnormal forces.
"About a year ago, I got a Facebook message from the driver in the truck when I first got blown up," Baxley says. "He's been diagnosed with a severe TBI from that blast and says he didn't have any problems until a year ago.
"He didn't hit his head, so I wouldn't say it was the blast wave that got him. It was the jarring. The explosion picked the truck up and put it down so fast, that your brain just jiggles. He had a brain scan, and now they're sending him to physical therapy, which is awesome. He's still active duty. I actually saw him for the first time since that deployment a few weeks ago, and he has a neck tic that he never had before. He was saying he had a lot of memory problems. I think everyone in this career field has those problems."
[Post and Courier Projects Reporter Tony Bartelme has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice in the past three years, most recently for "Storm of Money," a series that exposed how insurers set South Carolina's unusually high property insurance rates. He also earned a national Sigma Delta Chi award for that project. He has been with the newspaper since 1990. Beginning in October, he will begin a one-year sabbatical to work on a book, "Send Forth the Healing Sun," which grew from a Post and Courier series in 2010 about a Charleston neurosurgeon's quest to teach brain surgery in the African bush.]


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Antica Riseria Vignola Rice 2.2lbs
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Additional Information
Since 1880, five generations of the Vignola family have devoted themselves exclusively to the art of refining rice, gradually transforming the old mill in Balzola into a modern company. Harvested from all over the Po Valley, Vignola's Antica Riserva Arborio, Carnaroli and Vialone Nano are made from the highest quality grains and produced using the most innovative production. We love the kilo pack size which you can simply transfer into a container and dip into everyday for your favorite risottos, salads, soups and puddings! Arborio: The most well known of the three typical Italian Rices, the external part of the grain cooks more quickly than the central part which stays "al dente", in turn producing a firm and chewy, yet creamy risotto. Carnaroli: Considered the "King of Italian Rices", Carnaroli's high amylase starch content lends itself to even cooking and absorption of flavors. Extremely versatile, Carnaroli is excellent in risottos, salads, soups and stews. Vialone Nano: The traditional rice of Mantua and Veneto, Vialone Nano has a round, short grain which can absorb twice its own grain weight in liquid. It is ideal for a creamy risotto with butternut squash, mushrooms and meats.


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Technical details
Software requirements
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Saturday, March 31, 2012
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, claimed that cognitive development proceeds in four genetically determined stages, and that they always follow the same order. This theory of child development, he called 'genetic epistemology', and it saw the minds of children as very different from those of adults. Importantly, this perception must be taken into account in teaching and learning. Big problem – he got it mostly wrong.
Four 'ages and stages'
1. Sensorimotor (0-2) Intelligence takes form of motor actions.
2. Preoperational (3-7) Intelligence intuitive in nature.
3. Concrete operations (8-11) Intelligence logical but needs concrete referents.
4. Formal operations (12-15) Thinking involves abstractions.
Each of these stages had a more granular structure which Piaget explored in some detail. His emphasis on mathematical and analytic task experimentation has been criticized as being a little narrow. However, this, he saw as a good indicator of general cognitive development.
Famous four-stages demolished
His famous four stage developmental model has been fairly well demolished.
First, the Sensimotor Stage with the infamous 'hide a toy under a cloth and the child thinks it's no longer there' study, which turned out to be an exercise in distraction, and when repeated by Bower and Wishart in the absence of an adult, with a teddy, most children had no difficulty in understanding that the toy is still under the cloth. In general, Piaget simply focussed too much on motor actions when the real development is perceptual. Kagan also attributes object permanence to a simple increase in memory capacity.
Second, the Pre-operational Stage study, where a child fails to recognise a doll's point of view from photographs of three mountains, was shown to be too complex for the children to understand. A simpler experiment by Hughes, using dolls of two policeman, showed that many children can understand non-egocentric perspectives.
Third, the Concrete Operation Stage was refuted by Rose and Blank, when it was found that Piaget had been verbally correcting the children towards his wanted conclusions, invalidating the data. The 'naughty teddy' experiment also wiped out his famous three rows of sweets trial supposedly showing that kids couldn't get constancy in number. Overall he ignored hereditary, educational and cultural effects, thereby standardising theory, when, in fact, there are large differences in the speed and nature of development due to these and other factors
Fourthly, the Formal Operative Stage focused too much on formal logic, ignoring many other mature cognitive skills. It's as if we were all little mathematicians, not 'little scientists'. In fact kids develop, not in a predictable, linear fashion, but in fits and starts, and in many different ways.
All in all, his four stages were abandoned as subsequent research showed that development takes place much earlier than he had posited, is more of a continuum, with more variation in ages and more plasticity than was previously thought.
Poor scientist
How did he get it so wrong? Well, like Freud, he was no scientist. First, he used his own three children (or others from wealthy, professional families) and not objective or multiple observers to eliminate observational bias. Secondly, he often repeated a statement if the child's answer did not conform to his experimental expectation. Thirdly, the data and analysis lacked rigour, making most of his supposed studies next to useless. So, he led children towards the answers he wanted, didn't isolate the tested variables, used his own children, and was extremely vague on his concepts.
Is there much, or anything, that is useful in Piaget to a teacher? His four-stage theory of child development has been so completely negated by subsequent studies, that it's merely an exercise in the history of science. Piaget was the dominant force in child psychology but many of his claims are now subject to a critique from Bruner, Vygotsky, other constructivists and other developmental psychologists, who see a more malleable developmental picture. What's worrying is the fact that this Piagean view of child development, based on 'ages and stages' is still widely believed, despite being quite wrong. This leads to misguided teaching methods. Education and training is still soaked in this dated theory. However, on the whole, his sensitivity to age and cognitive development did lead to a more measured and appropriate use of educational techniques that matched the true cognitive capabilities of children.
Piaget, J. (1929). The Child's Conception of the World. NY: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.
Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgement of the Child. NY: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.
Piaget, J. (1969). The Mechanisms of Perception. London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul.
Paiget, J. (1970). The Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child. NY: Grossman.
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1969). The Psychology of the Child. NY: Basic Books.
Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1973). Memory and intelligence. NY: Basic Books.
Bybee, R.W. & Sund, R.B. (1982). Piaget for Educators (2nd Ed). Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill.
Jean Piaget Society
Friday, March 30, 2012
Althusser (1918-1990) – schools as ISAs and filters for class and labour
Despite the sad end to his life – he strangled his wife and spent his last years in an asylum, Althuser, born in Algiers, attempted to reconcile Marxism with structuralism. Like Gramsci, Althusser saw education as the means by which the class system perpetuates itself, stratifying people into workers, the petty bourgeoisie and capitalists. Schools are a means of control by the ruling class and capitalism, and a preparation for work (work being the defining characteristic of submission and class). The appearance of a meritocracy in schools, he thinks, masks the reality of ideological control. He says this through, what at times, is almost unreadable prose and jargon.
Ideological State Apparatuses - schools
Education is an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) working through schools, family, culture, politics, the law and unions. These must be distinguished from a Repressive State Apparatus (RSA); such as the army, police, prisons and courts. He saw himself as providing an improved Marxist analysis of the role of education by identifying it as an Ideological State Apparatus that controls rather than enlightens. However, he avoids interpreting this as a conspiracy or planned phenomenon. It is simply a function of a scientific Marxist analysis of capitalism.
Schools – the primary ISA
Schools (although it is sometimes unclear whether he means schools or education in general) are the primary ISA that reproduce ruling ideology. It does this through grading and assessment, so that the individual strives to achieve what is set as standards of achievement, yet in reality are merely state sponsored selection devices for work and class roles.
Schools and labour
We have much to learn from his analysis of the role of education in sorting and ranking people for the labour market and the political role of assessment and the illusion of meritocracy in schools. Some would argue that education has been subjected to intense political and ideological control, a process which must be rolled back to a more meritocratic and balanced approach.
Education was not the only ISA for Althusser, religion was another and this has turned out to be just as powerful a force in terms of the reinforcement of power through education. In some states, such as Israel and Arab states, the state religion is a core curriculum subject, in many others it is less explicit but just as strong a presence. In many ways this is a more obvious form of ideological apparatus, pushing young minds towards a specific, dominant set of beliefs before they have the ability to choose.
We can learn from Althusser, that education is not a neutral activity. It is often loaded with politics, religion and other underlying belief systems. Rather than being a producing autonomous, open-minded adult, it can to a degree, produce mere followers and close young minds. There is some truth in this idea of education perpetuating the myth of ideological positions but some of Althusser's theories are extremely abstract, and those who saw themselves as changing the world through education were to be bitterly disappointed. It was they who were seen to be clinging on to an ideology, which in itself has had its day. With Althusser, Marxist theory in education had run its course. History, a much admired Marxist tool, had proved them wrong.
Althusser, Louis,(1977) Lenin and Philosophy" and Other Essays. London: New Left Books
Althusser, Louis. Reading Capital (The Verso Classics Series)
Althusser, Louis. On Ideology (Verso Classics)
Althusser, Louis. For Marx (Verso Classics)
Ferrette L. Louis Althusser, Routledge Critical Thinkers, Routledge.
Habermas (1929- ): ideology, action but lost on new media
Habermas, building on the work of his teacher Adorno and Marx, critiqued capitalism and was firmly in favour of equality and democracy. We see here a neutered from of Marxism that looks for ideological causes of oppression in capitalism and a philosophy of action to bring about change, albeit in the context of social democracy. His influence on education has been considerable.
Ideology critique
A dominant ideology imposes power over disempowered groups. The disempowered may, or may not, be conscious of their position of weakness. Education must address this by making it clear what ideological forces are at work, then a look at the causes that give rise to these power structures. As a philosophy of change he also recommends action
Action research
This is a call for research by and within the educational system to counter ideological, political pressure and reduce inequalities. It relies on a theory of knowledge that owes much to Marx, namely the idea that all knowledge has a 'social' context or is socially constructed, so that all taught knowledge is inherently ideological and never neutral. Such research involves technical, practical and emancipatory goals. Technical includes control through the scientific approach, practical the qualitative analysis of the social context and emancipatory is to free people from the chains of their ideological oppression.
What to do
Habermas and his followers are not short on suggested action. The direct effect of the Habermas theory is to change the curriculum towards inclusive activity that critiques ideology through cultural studies, political discussion, citizenship, media studies, humanities and subjects that reflect on the process of education itself. In practice, teaching needs to accommodate discussion, problem solving, collaboration, and community-related learning. Teachers need to become political agents.
However, while it is hard to defend teachers as political agents or the extremes of socially constructed knowledge; curriculum policy, design and content are certainly ideological, in the sense of being politicised. There is much to be gained by listening to calls for inclusion, student participation and the student voice in education. Education, for Habermas should not simply fill up the recipients with the current canon but promote participation.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is an analysis of 'representational' communications beyond the control of the state starting in the 18th century with newspapers, coffee shops and so on . Then the capitalist 'public sphere' where he contends that mass, broadcast media destroyed this earlier dialogue-based culture, when audiences became passive. To be frank he's been overtaken by events and public statements show he neither understands new media nor its consequences. This is surprising, as it is mass new media that resturns us to active participation and dialogue. This may also be true in education where ew can escape the strictures of a culturally controlled canon.
Habermas has had a huge influence on educational theorising. We see in this form of social constructivism underlying, generalist claims about the social nature of all knowledge, that now seem both dated and impractical. On top of this, the fight against ideology suffers from appearing to be ideologically driven. Action research could be criticised for allowing a soft and woolly approach to educational research that has led to little or no change in the way Habermas and his followers had hoped. But, above all, he is misinformed and misguided on the role of technology.
Habermas J. (1971) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,transl. Shapiro Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1971) Towards a Rationalist Society, transl. Shapiro, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1974) Theory and Practice transl.Viertel, Heinemann.
Habermas J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society transl. McCarthy, Heinemann.
Rasmussen D. M. (1990) Reading Habermas, Basil Blackwell
Murphy M. Fleming T (Editors) (2009) Habermas, Critical Theory and Education, Routledge
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Gramsci (1891-1937) – hegemony, intellectuals and informal learning
Jailed by Mussolini, Gramsci wrote 32 notebooks, written over 11 years in prison but wasn't published in English until the 1970s. If you hear the word 'hegemony' it's likely to have come from someone who has read, or just as likely not read but unknowingly quoting, Gramsci.
As a Marxist his focus was on cultural and ideological forces in society. Informal education along with defined roles for intellectuals and redefining schools, are all main themes for Gramsci as he took Marxism and updated its theories in the light of 20th century evidence. The physical conflict between the classes became a mental conflict, where ideas were the weapons, perpetuated through institutions, especially educational institutions. He was to have a great influence on radical educational theorists such as Freire and Illich.
Traditional Marxism saw class control and conflict as one of domination and coercion. Gramsci saw that this was not subtle enough to explain the status quo and thought that values, morals and social institutions kept class structures in place. The common consciousness unwittingly adopts these beliefs and preserves inequalities and domination. Two forces operate here; first coercive institutions such as the armed services, police, government and legislature, second non-coercive institutions such as schools, churches, trade unions, social clubs and the family. Interestingly schools straddled both categories with their coercive curriculum, standards, qualifications and compulsion but also non-coercively through informal education, the hidden curriculum.
Power for the ruling classes, comes not from force but ideological manipulation and control. Schools and education play a major role in perpetuating this hegemony, reinforcing the social norms of dominance and obedience. The fact that different classes tend to have different schools is evidence that this dynamic was operative. Schools, he thought, should give all pupils a common grounding, free from social differences and we should be wary of vocational schools for the poor and academic schools for the rich. Everyone should have a good, grounded education, a comprehensive education. In many ways the UKs comprehensive system had its roots in Gramsci. Like Dewey and many others he saw learning as being active through activities. However, he was no Rousseau-like romantic. Children, he recognised, did not take naturally to learning.
Intellectuals, for example academics, are often seen as being above and apart from the ruling classes but Gramsci doubted this and saw some as perpetuating the system. Indeed, some intellectuals are the product of this class consciousness and their role is precisely the continuation of the current system. His solution was to encourage intellectuals from other class backgrounds to participate in political activity. This opened the door for a more enlightened view of education and change, counter to the brutality of anti-intellectualism of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Informal learning
Schools need to produce well-rounded participants in society, but also intellectuals who would act as a brake on the power of the ruling classes to exercise their power through education. The educated individual could act critically to change society and play a significant role in society. Education was therefore a powerful source of ideas and action in a society with the capability of changing society for the better. This was a powerful force in 20th century socialist thinking, where intellectuals, and worker's education, were regarded as being at the vanguard of working class consciousness and struggle.
Technology and informal learning
Many still see informal, adult education as great force for good, perhaps stripped of its Marxist clothes. The rise of technology may be moving us in this direction with almost universal access to online knowledge through Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and a plethora of other sources. A different breed of intellectuals may arise, free from the control of institutional academia. We may even see much learning break free, in the way Gramsci imagined, from the control of formal, coercive curriculum, assessment, qualifications and institutions.
Gramsci related Marxism directly to the institutions of education and saw them as playing a key role in the ideological revolution. The role of intellectuals, not merely academic, in changing society, was also recognised. Many would argue that this sort of academic Marxism had a deleterious effect on schooling, politicising education and schools. Others would still argue that an egalitarian educational system is far from realisation and that Gramsci's ideas still have huge currency in modern debates on education and schooling. As with so much of this debate, the danger lies in strong ideological positions being taken at the expense of innovative practice and realism.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Boggs, C. (1976) Gramsci's Marxism. London: Pluto Press.
Entwistle, H. (1979). Antonio Gramsci: Conservative schooling for radical politics. London: Routledge.
Carmel Borg et al (2003) Gramsci & Education Rowman & Littlefield.
Jones S. LouisGramsci, Routledge Critical Thinkers, Routledge.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Marx (1818-1883) – education for all but the educated became the enemy
Although Karl Marx wrote little on educational theory, his influence on learning theory and practice has been profound. It was Marxism that underpinned the entire communist world's view of learning in the 20th century, especially through Marxist theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser. In Soviet Russia and its satellite states education was remoulded around political aims and when the Cultural Revolution in China between 1949 and 1966 was unleashed, it had devastating consequences. To this day Marxism, to a degree, persists in educational and learning theory, most notably in the social constructivism of Vygotsky, Luria and Leontyev.
Education the result of economic structures
As Marx believed that our very consciousness, as well as our theorising and institutions, were the result of basic economic structures, education is seen as the result of existing class structures. In practice, this means that the ruling class controls and determines educational theory, policy and institutional development. In The Communist manifesto (jointly authored with Engels)
For Marx, education has a 'social' context, which is both direct and indirect, 'And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society'. The solution to the dominance of the ruling class was, first to abolish of child labour, then introduce free, state-funded education. The 'combination of education and industrial production' is also promoted, what we'd call vocational training. Unfortunately, 'dialectical materialism' was the manifestation of struggles between these groups within society and led to the identification of educated people and groups as enemies of the state.
Gramsci and Althusser
It was left to later Marxists to expand Marx's social theory of education into working models that relate to knowledge, intellectual development and education. Antonio Gramsci developed these ideas further through ideas such as "ideological hegemony". The ruling class determines what passes as knowledge or truth. Louis Althusser developed this further exploring the way in which education, state, church, media and other institutions become the ideological state apparatus. Class structures determine knowledge and the means by which knowledge is transmitted, distributed and taught. These ideas were to literally shape education for a large part of the twentieth century across entire continents and in some outliers, notably North Korea and Cuba, the idea persists.
Social constructivism
Marx is still having a profound influence on educational theory today through social constructivist theory. The resurrection of Vygotsky has led to strong beliefs and practices around the role of the teachers and collaborative learning and the belief that social context lies at the heart of educational problems. Here, it is clear that Marxist 'class consciousness' is replaced by 'social consciousness'. We no longer have Marxist ideology shaping education, but we do have the ideas dressed up in sociology and social psychology.
Technology and education
With remarkable foresight Marx also predicted the massive impact technology would have on the division of labour. His vision of a classless society would lead to such divisions disappear, with education as the driver. The breakdown of traditional academic and vocational should break down, 'free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labour impresses upon every individual'. Individuals will have several careers and through 'education… pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations'. This proved hard, if not impossible to implement, even in hard-lined Communist countries.
Disastrous legacy
'The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it' said Marx. And change it they did, mostly for the worse. The 20th century saw the dogmatism of Lysenko in Soviet Russia, political indoctrination in schools and dialectical materialism interpreted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, into an intellectual pogrom. The results in Cambodia, speak for themselves, with the virtual elimination of education and the educated. With that and the collapse of the Soviet Union came the end of the utopian dream.
We are still living with a hangover of Marxist theory in education, especially through social constructivist theories. Marxism is far from dead and the Marxist idea that everything becomes commoditised, including knowledge and education, is useful in combating the excesses of education and training aimed merely at increasing productivity. On the positive side, the Victorian democratisation of education, that arose from the industrial revolution, was transformed by Marxist and socialist ideas into a movement that pushed for free, state-funded education as a right for every citizen. This struggle is still raging as attempts are made to widen access to education and higher education across all socio-economic groups. In addition, the relationship between the state and education remains problematic is worth examination, and Marxist theorists have much to say that is useful in relation to the idea that education reflects and props up class differences, by filtering people, not on ability, but social background. Inequalities still exist and political interference through ideological, rather than evidence-based policies, are still the norm. Few, for example, would see even current education systems as truly meritocratic.
Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1983) The Portable Karl Marx, ed. by Eugene Kamenka, Viking
Karl Marx, (1988) The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Frederic L. Bender, Norton
Karl Marx, (1992) Early Writings, tr. by Rodney Livingstone, Penguin
Karl Marx, (1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, tr. by Ben Fowkes Penguin.
Terry Eagleton, (1999) Marx Routledge
Francis Wheen, (1999) Karl Marx Fourth Estate
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Dewey (1859 - 1952) – practical, problem-based learning
Did you know that Dewy headed up the commission that investigated Trotsky in Mexico? John Dewey, like Socrates, was a philosopher first and educational theorist second, and like Socrates, his progressive educational theory has been simplified to the level of caricature. It is often assumed that he favoured an extreme version of discovery learning. This was not in fact the case. As a philosopher he was what is called a 'pragmatist', a school of philosophy that emerged from Pierce and James in the 19th century. As befits an American with strong democratic beliefs he saw education as leading towards authentic participation in a democratic nation.
His reflections on the nature of knowledge, experience and communication, combined with his views of democracy and community, led to an educational theory that started with a broad based vision of what education should be, an identification of educational methods and a practical view of its implementation. He practised what he preached through his own 'Laboratory School'.
Problem based learning
He is best known for his problem-solving approach to learning. In line with his view that science and experimentation lay at the heart of learning for both a person and society, he encouraged innovation and abhorred dogmatic principles and practices. For Dewey, exposure to certain types of learning experiences are more important than others. Schools should create learning opportunities by engaging in occupational activities, as practised by the rest of society. He was keen on 'occupational' learning and practical skills that produced independent, self-directing, autonomous adults. That schools had become divorced from society was one of his basic claims. In his model school, the students planted wheat and cotton, processed and transported it for sale to market.
Schools – divorced from society
Dewey spoke out against communism as well as the right-wing threat in US politics, including what he saw as reactionary Catholicism. A recent reappraisal sees him as a typical American liberal believing in a secular approach and reform in education, moving it beyond the limitations of traditional 'schooling'. He was refreshingly honest about their limitations and saw schools as only one means of learning, 'and compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means'. In fact, he was keen to break down the boundaries of school, seeing them as a community within a community or an 'embryonic society'. Schools are necessary but must not get obsessed with streaming, testing and not be overly academic in the curriculum. They must reflect the real world, not sit above and apart from society.
However, Dewey was not a full-on progressive and had little time for Rousseau's free approach to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Structure and teaching were important. Perhaps his most important contribution to education is his constant attempts to break down the traditional dualities in education between theory and practice, academic and vocational, public and private, individual and group. This mode of thinking, he thought, led education astray. The educational establishment, in his view, seemed determined to keep themselves, and their institutions, apart from the real world by holding on to abstract and often ill-defined definitions about the purpose of education.
Dewey is a child of the Enlightenment, a progressive thinker, not a traditionalist. More importantly for our purposes, experiential learning through Kolb and others had its origins in Dewey. His views on schools and how they relate to a modern, democratic society are also of lasting interest. Those involved in the modern debate about a more active role for schools in their community can benefit from a re-reading of Dewey as he raises important issues about the relevance of education, the destructive institutional practices and the lack of practical, pragmatic, vocational and life-skills teaching.
Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.), New York: Free Press.
Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (Revised edn.), Boston: D. C. Heath.
Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education, New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963).
Dewey, J. (1929) Experience and Nature, New York: Dover. (Dover edition first published in 1958).
Campbell, J. (1995) Understanding John Dewey. Nature and co-operative intelligence, Chicago: Open Court.
Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, New York: W. W. Norton.
Monday, March 26, 2012
James (1842-1910) – father of modern psychology, develop habits, learn by doing
William James, elder brother of Henry James the novelist, asked his younger brother to stay close for six weeks after he died, as he wanted to try to contact him from the next world. No messages were ever received but it showed how seriously he took real inquiry and experimentation. In fact he is widely regarded as the father of modern psychology. His The Principles of Psychology (1890) set the tone for future inquiry into the mind, establishing psychology as a separate discipline; the scientific study of the mind. Grounded in his philosophical theory of pragmatism, James's theories emphasised the consequences of one's actions, rather than pure theoretical speculation.
Learning by doing
Like Locke, he wrote a practical book Talks to Teachers (1899), originally a series of lectures, giving practical advice to teachers. The difference is that psychology had now become, through his efforts, a science, and its principles could be used in practice. It was here that he put forward his now famous theory on learning by doing. This was to heavily influence John Dewey, and the future of educational theory through to Kolb and others. The book doesn't pretend to have all the answers, as psychology is a science; teaching an art. But some psychological principles are clear.
Vocational learning - habits
Like Locke, he believed that education is, above all, the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behaviour. Children should not be expected to learn by rote. Their experiences must be turned into useful and habitual behaviour through action. The learner must listen, but then take notes, experiment, write essays, measure, consult and apply.
He recommends learning through work and the creation of real things or dealings with real people in, for example, a shop, to give you educational experiences beyond mere theory. He was in fact a firm advocate of vocationally oriented schools and work-based learning (relevant today or not?).
The supervision of the acquisition of habit is another of his principles. Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, and should be exercised until securely rooted. The result of almost all learning is this habitual behaviour. Association, interest, attention, will and motivation; these are James's driving forces in education. In addition there's memory, curiosity, emulation, constructiveness, pride, fear and love - all impulses that must be turned to good use. This is not to say that he favoured a lazy, or what he called 'soft pedagogics'. He recognized that learning was sometimes hard, even arduous.
William James proved to be a turning point in the history of both psychology and educational theory. He set both off in a more orderly fashion, introducing the scientific study of the mind as applied to learning. This has since proved to be by far the most fruitful approach to education and learning theory, although still often ignored. In particular, his emphasis on learning by doing still reverberates through Dewey, Kolb and others.
Myers, G (Editor). William James: Writings 1878-1899, Library of America
Myers, G (Editor). William James: Writings 1902-1910, Library of America
James, William. (1899) Talks to Teachers
James, William. (1899) The Principles of Psychology
James, William. (1899) Pragmatism
Putnam, Hilary. (1995) Pragmatism: An Open Question, Blackwell
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Mohammed (570AD –632AD) - books, recitation, memorisation and writing
It is claimed that Mohammed was illiterate and the Koran, was literally the word of God, transcribed by others (like Socrates) from his revelations. Mohammed is therefore a prophet and teacher but in reality a mouthpiece for the absolute message of God.
Koran and education
Books, especially the Koran, are held in the highest regard and mosques functioned as repositories of books. In Sura 75:15–18 attentive reading is specifically mentioned. This reverence for the 'book', especially the Koran, is paramount. Indeed it was almost immediately made into a 'codex' (book form), as they had acquired paper technology from captured Chinese sailors in 751AD. One had to even wash before touching the Koran.
The dominant role this one book, of similar length to the Gospels, has had on education in the Muslim world cannot be underestimated. For five centuries after its emergence in the 7th century, the so called 'Golden Age of Arabic culture, encouraged centres of learning in Damascus, Bagdad and Cairo. Their libraries collected and distributed Western classical texts and made advances in mathematics, science, philosophy and law.
Recite and repeat
Koran means 'to recite' and the text was originally meant to be read aloud. It has been argued that this has led to a dependence on rote learning. Prayer is one of the five pillars of Islam, recommended five times a day, so the repetition of recitation, known to be effective for embedding knowledge in long term memory, becomes an ingrained habit, as does listening attentively, especially at Friday prayers and also through the attentive reading of the Koran. On the other hand this focus on recitation and repetition tends to infect studies across all subjects and education in the Arab world has been criticised for its dependence on simple recitation at the expense of critical analysis.
Islam literally means 'submission' and it has been argued that this affects the way learners and teachers approach education. In particular, memorisation of the Koran, which has been admired for centuries in the Muslim world, may have encouraged the memorisation and regurgitation of text, rather than analysis and critical thinking. With traditional paternalism, authority of the state and dominance of religion, some argue, comes a lack of questioning, passive learners and didactic teaching. Obedience and compliance, not unusual in other educational systems, are arguably much more embedded in Islamic countries. The time spent on religious studies also squeezes out time available for other subjects. This may be another reason for the low levels of original research and patents in countries where Islamic education is dominant.
Koran and writing
Writing, not only through the Koran, but in other expository texts, is a strong feature of Islamic education. Sura 96 urges believers to 'recite' but also explains that God taught man through the 'pen', namely writing. Writing, especially calligraphy, is regarded as a high art form, as it is in the East (but never was in in the West). The double edged sword is that the power of the pen is seen as the power of God's absolute religious knowledge, not the freedom to write critically. Indeed, the writing, even drawing, has led to death threats 'fatwas', on novelists and cartoonists. Islam, like Christianity, has supported the extremes of rigorous scholarship and education but also bans on education (especially for women) and even the burning of books.
The Arab world has one written language, and, as the Arab Spring has proven, its demographically young populations have used technology to depose dictators and criticise the cronyism, nepotism and corruption in those societies. With this may come a more open attitude and access to education, using the technology they so successfully used in learning how to change their systems of government. We should start to see the emergence of good Arabic content, tools that cater for the Arabic language and an increased use of technology based learning, along with the democratisation of education.
For all its educational qualities, the focus on one book, its absolute truth and primitive recitation, repletion and memorisation seem like primitive pedagogies, leaving little room for active and critical thought. Islam, like the extremes of Christianity and Judaism, can be seen as a return to an absolute form of dogmatism, where young minds are locked down before they have had a chance to reflect or choose. This is an anathema to secularists who believe that education should open young minds not close them down. On the other hand, let us not forget that the Islamic world encouraged learning, scholarship and intellectual endeavour, gifting the world those texts of the Classical world we now so admire.
DawoodJ. (Transl. 1956, revised 2000) The Koran Penguin Classics
Lyons M (2011) The Book Thames & Hudson
Hitti P.K. (1936) History of the Arabs MacMillan
Whitaker B (2009) What's Wrong with the Middle East. Saqi
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Jesus (7–2 BC to 30–36 AD) - parables, sermons but also dreaded lectures
Jesus, as a teacher, was primarily a man of action but in terms of instruction it was his powerful parables and sermons that stand out in the Gospels. Importantly, there is no sense of exclusion as he encourages shunned lepers, hated tax inspectors, prostitutes, criminals and especially the poor, to receive his message. Has there been any more radical and effective teacher? When it came to powerful messages it was through his individual acts of love, kindness and forgiveness that make their mark. However, there is much to learn from how he taught.
Parables were not used by him to impose moral rules but to show, by story-telling, how to act by listening to examples of how others have acted. Jesus was clear about why he used them and why they worked, explaining this in the Gospels. Parables are image rich and allow the listener or reader to picture the scene and recall from episodic memory. They appeal to the illiterate poor and have the power to change behaviour and lives. Christian art is full of images that retell these parables, as most people across the ages were illiterate.
Jesus also used sermons, notably the Sermon on the Mount, to tell his story and the sermon was to become the priest and preachers pedagogic weapon for centuries to come. Paul the Apostle was the man who took Christianity to the world, preaching in major cities and shaped the way Christianity was to be spread and taught for the almost two millennia. From Paul we get the read speech and authoritative sermon. This is not the Sermon on the Mount but the proselytising sermon that we still hear from every pulpit, priest and preacher to this day.
Sermon to lecture
Given the hold religion had on educational institutions until relatively recently, especially Universities, it is hardly surprising that the sermon transmogrified into the 'lecture', which to this day, remains the main pedagogic technique in Higher education. In education it moved from pulpit to lectern. 'Lectern' means 'reading desk' and the word 'lecture', from the 14th century meant 'the act of reading', from the Latin 'to read'. It was only in the 16th century that this shifted to mean a talk for teaching a specific topic or subject. The verb 'to lecture' is first recorded in 1590. This pre-print pedagogy remains the primary pedagogic method in Higher Education, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is inefficient and runs counter to almost everything we know about the psychology of learning.
We can learn from the power of parables, that attitudinal change can come if we show exemplary behaviour in a way that is memorable, through story-telling. This has been the power of YouTube, TED and video. We should also remember that this is not the way to treat all forms of learning. In the end it is through action that we learn to change ourselves. The point is not just to look and listen but to act.
Has there been any more powerful teacher? His only rival is perhaps the Buddha or Mohammed. This one man shaped two millennia of thought and culture through the use of simple parables and sermons. These were to be retold and evangelised by others such as Paul, and armies of preachers, to congregations, largely in churches, that continues to this day. Note that some, like Nietzsche, thought that this led to a two millennia aberration and, in particular, a thousand years stultifying scholasticism. The religious influence on pedagogy also meant that the sermon became the dull one hour lecture, which still dominates much of our educational pedagogy today. This has held back pedagogic progress rendering much higher education a slow, ponderous and too often tedious affair. There is, of course, the threat to science posed by fundamentalist Christianity, in its denial of evolutionary theory, especially in the US. However, overall Christianity has more recently played a key role in the provision of universal schooling.
Wilson A,N. (1992) Jesus Sinclair-Stevenson
Friday, March 23, 2012
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) – original & radical
Mary Wollstonecraft bursts with originality in her thoughts on education rejecting the dry, dull teaching of the day, even recommending peer-justice by students. However, she is best known for her ground-breaking work in politics and education, work on the education of women that has resonated through to 20th century feminism. She adopted the Enlightenment love of reason in educational theory but wrote a devastating attack on Rousseau's crude recommendations on the education of women. Women deserved the same education as men and the right to be educated alongside men. But she had more to say on education than this one principle.
In her Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a political work, she is critical of the gender-based language and gender analogies used by Burke and launches a verbal broadside into the monarchy and aristocracy, in favour of republicanism. In this she invokes the Enlightenment ideas of reason and progress. But it is in Chapter 12 of her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that she presents a detailed account of her educational views.
Schools – innovations
She launches a direct attack on the schools and schooling of the day, especially boarding schools, as she thinks it is vital that children receive both home life and some structured respite from home for learning. However, she castigates educators for their 'fear of innovation' and decries the lines of benches and 'parrot-like prattle'. State funded day schools should be available to all. Most importantly, she is firmly against single-sex schools. It is important that both girls and boys learn from and about each other for a harmonious society. Long vacations are undesirable, as they both disrupt learning, leading to forgetting, and place too much pressure on the home environment.
Much teaching is pedantic and tyrannical with its recitation and focus on Latin and Greek. And in a prescient passage notes that, 'It is not for the benefit of society that a few brilliant men should be brought forward at the expense of the multitude'. With echoes of Rousseau she recommends a broad curriculum but with a focus on open air and exercise. And harking back to Socrates, she recommends that some subjects, notably religion, history, the history of man and politics, be taught through conversation.
On discipline she recommends that peer-punishment be implemented making it free from teachers, so that the students learn justice from practice. How innovative is that!
Women and education
Rousseau's position on the education of women, which saw them as not only lacking the abilities of men but be taught for the pleasure of men. Women, Wollstonecraft stated, must seek intellectual autonomy and should not depend on men for that goal. They are not, as some at that time claimed, slaves to their emotional passions and have the ability to develop rational and intellectual passions and abilities. In short, women have the right to the same education as men and to be taught alongside men.
In detail, she provides an analysis of the enslavement to the body beautiful 250 years before the feminism of the late 20th century. Interestingly, she was sensitive to the different roles women have from men, as wives and mothers, but saw that this only has a bearing in the sense that education and reason improves the skills needed in these roles. This is a debate that is still alive in feminist thinking. But before we see her as a wholly modern, educational theorist we must also remember that she thought that poor children should be taught in separate schools.
It is delightful to read of Enlightenment innovations on the curriculum, the school calendar and discipline that would put our modern-day educational establishment to shame. But her primary contribution is that she challenged society to offer equal political and educational rights to women, claiming that the only way to prove her case was to put it to the test. We did, and it passed the test magnificently. Although it was well into the 20th century before it happened and even quite recently some Universities did not admit women. A recent vindication of her work is the fact that women, in many countries, now outperform men in education and that the education of women is seen as a key to economic prosperity in the developing world.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, (1786) Thoughts on the education of Daughters
Wollstonecraft, Mary, (1790) A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Wollstonecraft, Mary, (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Rousseau (1712-1778) – prickly, paranoid, noble savage
Noble savage
As an exponent of The Noble Savage he saw civilisation as a corrupting influence, creating inequalities and conflict. His educational theories are an attempt to avoid such corruption within the mind of essentially good human beings, the antithesis of the Hobbesian notion of our intrinsic savagery.
With a passing nod to Locke in the preface to Emile, he states his intention to build a complete theory of education from the point of view of the learner. Emile grows from a boy to a man and Rousseau tracks his inner, natural growth, matched by education appropriate to these natural stages of development. It is the learner that matters and the learner who develops in a natural fashion, not shaped by teachers but growing in response to opportunities for development.
The book develops over five sections The first two are about giving the child freedom to explore and drink from his/her senses, as their ability to focus on serious learning is absent and when forced, is counterproductive. It is only at around 12 that the education of the mind should be considered. From 15-20 we are born again as we develop naturally into adults. This time of turbulent emotion allows us to learn about conflict, morals and religion. We must experience a gradual introduction into the ways of the world and wider society, but it is between 20-25 that one must be introduced to society. Here Emile meets Sophie, who he will marry. Rousseau takes this opportunity to draw differences between the education of men and women, based on his belief that the two sexes are naturally different.
Educational principles – nature, men and things
Education comes from nature, men and things, these are our three masters and nature is the most important. The child, naturally good, needs simple freedom and not rushed into inappropriate or unnatural educational activity. Play and self-reliance are important. From then on, each stage of natural development needs appropriate and personal education with learning appropriately matched to age. The focus is on motivation, first through restlessness, then curiosity and later goals. People do not need to be taught in a traditional sense; they need to be exposed to problems and come to their own conclusions.
In many ways, the presentation of self-paced e-learning, open access to knowledge through Google, Wikipedia and Open Educational resources and projects such as the hole-in-the-wall' work of Sugata Mitra, are heirs to the Rousseau dream. There is, to this day, a feeling that the strictures and structures of post-industrial revolution are harmful and counter-productive have led to a search for more natural and meaningful ways to learn. We may yet find that Rousseau's dream will become a reality.
David Hume wrote, "He is plainly mad, after having long been maddish", and although Rousseau's legacy has been profound, it is problematic. Having encouraged the idea of romantic naturalism and the idea of the noble and good child, that merely needs to be nurtured in the right way through discovery learning, he perhaps paints an over-romantic picture of education as natural development. The Rousseau legacy is the idea that all of our educational ills come from the domineering effect of society and its institutional approach to educational development. If we are allowed to develop naturally, he claims, all will be well. This may be an over-optimistic view of human nature and development, and although not without truth, lacks psychological depth. Emile, as Althusser claimed, now reads like a fictional utopia.
Rousseau, J-J. (1762) Émile, London: Penguin.
Rousseau, J-J (1762) The Social Contract, London: Penguin. (1953 edn.) Translated and introduced by Maurice Cranston.
Rousseau, J-J (1755) A Discourse on Inequality. Translated with an introduction by M. Cranston (1984 edn.), London: Penguin.
Rousseau, J-J (1755) A Discourse on Political Economy. Available as part of The Social Contract and Discourses, London: Everyman/Dent.
Rousseau, J-J (1782) The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1953 edn.), London: Penguin.
Rousseau, J-J (1782) Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated with an introduction by P. France, London: Penguin.
Boyd, W. (1956) Émile for Today. The Émile of Jean Jaques Rousseau selected, translated and interpreted by William Boyd, London: Heinemann.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Locke (1632-1704) –motivation, habit, practice - sceptical on schools & arts
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1692), is really a practical guide, rather than a theoretical treatise but that's what makes it so fascinating and readable. Widely translated, it became a manual for education among the upper classes for most of 18th century.
As the greatest philosopher of his age, he laid the foundations for empiricism and the enlightenment view of knowledge, politics and education. Sceptical of the educational practices of his day, it was a break from the dry, educational stranglehold of medieval scholasticism. His is a sophisticated theory of education built, not around the transmission of information, but the shaping of habits and character, and in some detail.
Motivation matters
As a libertarian he thought that the learner must not be coerced nor learn when they are not in the right frame of mind, neither should they be beaten. They must be made to feel as if it is in their own interest, and that they are acting from their own free will. Without pleasure and play, the child will become demotivated. Conversation is strongly favoured over lecturing, and the child's character and temperament needs to be understood if they are to be taught well. Not that children should be spoilt. Indeed he recommends that parents, in particular, should be tough on their children in their early years.
His approach is a series of very practical methods for encouraging good habits and character right down to details on curiosity, games, language learning, dancing etc. He recommends educational methods that focus on example and practice, rather than the teaching of information and principles, as children do not remember or apply rules. In this sense, it is not learning that matters, but the establishment of good learning habits. It is repeated practice that reinforces these behaviours so they become instinctive, through the use of the concrete rather than the abstract. This is way ahead of its time.
Academic and vocational skills (but not the arts)
In particular, everyone should learn a manual skill, such as carpentry, as it helps relax the mind. Beyond this, his focus is on a healthy mind that has the basics in reading, writing, arithmetic and a knowledge of literature along with the natural and social sciences. The arts, like Plato, he regarded as either useless or dangerous. Detailed scholarly study should be left to those who want to become scholars.
Sceptical on schools
He does not recommend school (for those who can afford tutors), and sets great store on the enthusiasm of parents, and the family in general. Schools, he thought, merely perpetuate bad company and bad habits of behaviour. He explicitly rejects the focus on Greek and Latin through the teaching of grammar. A cross-curricular approach should, for example, move from French through geography (places in France) and only after a knowledge of numbers to longitude and latitude then Copernican astronomy. It is this orderly approach to the curriculum that puts the practical before the abstract, that lies at the heart of his pedagogy.
Lastly, and not many learning theorists touch on this, Locke recommends travel, not at 16-20 (the gap year norm) but either before this age, to acquire a language, or after when one can truly appreciate the difference between your own and another culture.
His thoughts on education, although influential, are weakened by the fact that, like most pure empiricists, he saw the mind as a table rasa or blank slate. But this was tempered by his recognition of individual character. We can now see that he was also a product of the age, making a firm distinction between the education of Gentlemen and the masses but remember also that he was an active investor and political supporter of the slave trade.
These points aside,, it is the idea of a free mind, that uses the power of reason to become contributory, autonomous adults in a free society, that mark out this educational theory. The sweeping scope of his thinking and thoroughly practical recommendations are impressive, couching education in a sophisticated theory of knowledge and liberal political society with observations and general views on education that point towards a tradition that focused on character and autonomy within society, rather than the transmission of knowledge.
Aaron, R. (1971). John Locke. Oxford: The Oxford University Press
Cranston, M. (1969). John Locke (rev. ed. Green and Co. Ltd. London: Longmans
Tarcov, N. (1984). Locke's education for liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Yolton, J. W. (1968). John Locke and the way of ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press


text:
Campagnolo Record-D Skeleton Brakeset
This item is currently not available.
- Skeleton design eliminates unneeded material while optimizing power, modulation and torque
- Differentiating system uses dual pivot front and single pivot rear mechanisms, both with ball bearing actuation
- Orbital pad adjustment for precise setup without chatter. Enhanced pad fixing system for added security and ease of pad removal and installation
- Includes color-matched alloy-cartridge pads with special compound, alloy hardware and a 13.5mm front-mount recessed T-nut
- Dual pivot front/single pivot rear
- Wheel: front/rear set
- Reach: 40-50mm
- Weight: 284g


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Is it possible to add name="post_content" to more than one input field?
I am using Contact Form 7 plugin, and now only the last input field with name="post_content" is gathered in the post.
If I put the whole form in a div I only get raw data (not the filled one). Can someone help please.