The debate about the appropriate methodology of medical education has been (and still is) dominated by the opposing poles of teaching science versus teaching practical skills. I will argue that this conflict between scientific education and practical training has its roots in the underlying, more systematic question about the conceptual foundation of medicine: how far or in what respects can medicine be considered to be a science? By analyzing the epistemological status of medicine I will show that the internal (...) aim of medicine( promoting health through the prevention and treatment of disease ) differs from the internal aim of science ( the methodological and systematic acquisition of knowledge ). Therefore, medicine as a whole discipline should not be considered as a science. However, medicine can be conceptually and methodologically scientific in so much as it is based on scientific knowledge. There is evidence from cognitive science research that diagnostic reasoning not only relies on the application of scientific knowledge but also — especially in routine cases – on a process of pattern recognition, a reasoning strategy based on the memory of previously encountered patients. Hence, medical education must contain both: the imparting of scientific knowledge and the rich exposure to concrete cases during practical training. Hence, the question of teaching science vs. the apprentice model will not be either-or but rather both — but in which proportion? (shrink)

Recently, growing numbers of interns, apprentices, and volunteers are being recruited to work seasonally on ecologically oriented and organic farms across the global north. To date, there has been very little research examining these emergent forms of non-waged work. In this paper, we analyze the relationships between non-waged agricultural work and the economic circumstances of small- to medium-size farms and the non-economic ambitions of farm operators. We do so through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of farmers’ responses to two surveys (...) we conducted of farmers using non-waged workers in Ontario, Canada. We situate our analysis within debates on the agrarian question, which we contend requires an account for both the economic and non-economic dimensions of new forms of non-waged work on farms. We suggest that many ecologically oriented farm operators are struggling financially and report low gross on-farm revenues and personal incomes. We argue that in addition to relying on off-farm incomes and self-exploitation, many farms are managing to persist in a challenging economic climate through their use of intern, apprentice, and volunteer labor. However, we also suggest that the growth of non-waged work on farms is not simply being driven by economic processes but also a series of non-economic relationships focused on non-institutional farmer training, the pursuit of sustainability, and social movement building. We suggest, the “economic” and “non-economic” dimensions of internships, apprenticeships, and forms of volunteerism sit uneasily alongside of one another, generating questions about the politics, ethics, and sustainability of non-waged work and ecological farming. (shrink)

If graduate school is a kind of professional school, then graduate school in philosophy should train students in the many facets of the profession. This paper describes the nature of the “philosophy workshop” by comparing and contrasting it to two other components of graduate school: lecture courses and research seminars. In contrast to lecture courses that provide a large quantity of information in a succinct and well-guided fashion, and research seminars that concentrate on a specific topic or line of argument, (...) philosophy workshops offers students (and instructors) a more exploratory and more open-ended approach to learning philosophy. (shrink)

If graduate school is a kind of professional school, then graduate school in philosophy should train students in the many facets of the profession. This paper describes the nature of the “philosophy workshop” by comparing and contrasting it to two other components of graduate school: lecture courses and research seminars. In contrast to lecture courses that provide a large quantity of information in a succinct and well-guided fashion, and research seminars that concentrate on a specific topic or line of argument, (...) philosophy workshops offers students (and instructors) a more exploratory and more open-ended approach to learning philosophy. (shrink)

In the debate concerning the education of nurses that is currently taking place in Denmark, two widely differing views are apparent regarding the best way of training nurses such that the ethical aspect of their work is adequately considered. The first of these is based on the premise that practical care is fundamental to and justified by theories on nursing, care and ethics, which is why the theoretical part of nurse education deserves a higher priority. The second view is (...) based on the premise that social care cannot be taught by means of theories, but can be learnt only through practice. The master-apprentice principle of ancient Greece is stressed in connection with this as being a viable alternative to the theoretical model of education. These two very different views can be traced back to Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on ethics and teaching respectively; indeed, those engaged in the debate make specific reference to these philosophers. In Denmark, a third fundamental viewpoint exists, known as ‘ontological ethics’. Phenomenologist KE Løgstrup is one of the best-known representatives of this view. Basing the line of argument on Løgstrup’s ethics and the view of education associated with this, this article questions the relevance of ancient Greek thought to today’s world by illustrating a number of problems that are connected with the theoretical model of nurse education and with the master-apprentice principle. Løgstrup associates ethics with the aesthetic principle that ‘the useless is the most useful’ in human life and with the view we also see in Kierkegaard’s and NFS Grundtvig’s writings that ethics can be imparted only by indirect means. Løgstrup bases his understanding of ethics on the Judaeo-Christian concept of Genesis and the view that human beings were created with an ethical potential that is best nourished by aesthetic impressions. (shrink)

Adopting a sociopragmatic and interactional perspective, the paper proposes to investigate how apprentices engage in questioning practices and how trainers respond to these questions. A detailed empirical analysis of audio/video data collected in the context of Swiss training companies establishes that answers provided by trainers in response to questions do not constitute the dominant form of questioning work observed. Alternative interactional patterns that stress the tensions connected with questioning in the workplace context and the complexity of the social practices (...) associated with workplace learning are identified and described. These findings illuminate the challenges faced by apprentices when joining the workplace and underscore the importance of a sociopragmatic perspective in addressing social issues related to initial vocational education. (shrink)

Social justice is a concept we take for granted. We assume that it means using state structures to ensure equality and fairness. But is that true? Or, do state structures of social order actually inhibit creativity, freedom, social welfare, and belonging? This collection broadens the boundaries of the ways we think about what constitutes criminality and interrogates issues of social justice and power in new, innovative and critical ways. The essays examine a wide variety of themes, including the deconstruction of (...) concepts of freedom and equality, notions of criminality and deviance, state regulation of social order, and various aspects of feminist criminology. (shrink)

ArgumentApprenticeship was probably the largest mode of organized learning in early modern European societies, and artisan practitioners commonly began as apprentices. Yet little is known about how youths actually gained skills. I develop a model of vocational pedagogy that accounts for the characteristics of apprenticeship and use a range of legal and autobiographical sources to examine the contribution of different forms of training in England. Apprenticeship emerges as a relatively narrow channel, in which the master’s contribution to training (...) was weakly defined and executed conservatively. The creation of complementary channels of formal instruction was constrained by cost and coordination problems. When we consider a range of British youths who obtained advanced skills as artisan practitioners (and engaged in invention or pursued natural philosophical interests), we see the importance of individual agency over institutional structures. For these youths, training could involve rejecting apprenticeship, engaging in periods of advanced study, including time in multiple workshops after the end of apprenticeship, and parallel campaigns to access scarce books and communities of scholarship. (shrink)

What did science make possible for colonial rule? How was science in turn marked by the knowledge and practices of those under colonial rule? Here I approach these questions via the social history of Madras Observatory. Constructed in 1791 by the East India Company, the observatory was to provide local time to mariners and served as a clearinghouse for the company’s survey and revenue administration. The astronomical work of Madras’ Brahmin assistants relied upon their knowledge of jyotiśāstra [Sanskrit astronomy/astrology], and (...) can be seen as a specialized form of the kind of South Indian scribal labor and knowledge that also staffed the company’s tax offices. If at Greenwich the division of labor meant observatory work bore resemblances to the factory and the accounts office, in Madras, astronomy and accounting drew on similar labor forms because they were part of the same enterprise. But the company did not just adapt preexisting forms of labor, it also attempted to produce its own at a school built near the observatory to train “half-caste” orphans as apprentice surveyors and assistant computers. The school, staffed by the Brahmins, drew upon knowledge and pedagogical practice associated with the tinnai, the schools in which upper-caste children learned to read, write, and calculate. For a time, the observatory’s social order was literally “half-caste.” The paper also considers how the relationship between caste, status, and instrument was reflected in the visual and material culture of the observatory, such as in Indian-language inscriptions on its central pillar. For company astronomers, the measurement of time meant reworking the relationships among the Indian past, the colonial present, and an imperial posterity. Science under colonial rule spanned multiple temporal and social registers because it was the result of negotiations between the demands of political economy and the knowledge and practices of colonized others. (shrink)

In the debate concerning the education of nurses that is currently taking place in Denmark, two widely differing views are apparent regarding the best way of training nurses such that the ethical aspect of their work is adequately considered. The first of these is based on the premise that practical care is fundamental to and justified by theories on nursing, care and ethics, which is why the theoretical part of nurse education deserves a higher priority. The second view is (...) based on the premise that social care cannot be taught by means of theories, but can be learnt only through practice. The master-apprentice principle of ancient Greece is stressed in connection with this as being a viable alternative to the theoretical model of education. These two very different views can be traced back to Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas on ethics and teaching respectively; indeed, those engaged in the debate make specific reference to these philosophers. In Denmark, a third fundamental viewpoint exists, known as ‘ontological ethics’. Phenomenologist KE Løgstrup is one of the best-known representatives of this view. Basing the line of argument on Løgstrup’s ethics and the view of education associated with this, this article questions the relevance of ancient Greek thought to today’s world by illustrating a number of problems that are connected with the theoretical model of nurse education and with the master-apprentice principle. Løgstrup associates ethics with the aesthetic principle that ‘the useless is the most useful’ in human life and with the view we also see in Kierkegaard’s and NFS Grundtvig’s writings that ethics can be imparted only by indirect means. Løgstrup bases his understanding of ethics on the Judaeo-Christian concept of Genesis and the view that human beings were created with an ethical potential that is best nourished by aesthetic impressions. (shrink)

Purpose: The main aim of the research was to analyse aggression dimensions among athletes practising martial arts and combat sports.Material and Methods: There were 219 respondents. The Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire in the Polish adaptation by Siekierka was applied.Results: Martial arts apprentices turned out to present a statistically significantly lower level of hostility and of the general aggression index than combat sports athletes. It turned out that lower level of aggression was noted in female participants, verbal aggression, hostility, and (...) the general aggression index. Analysis revealed that the training experience and the training rank did not differentiated the level of the respondents' particular aggression dimensions.Conclusions: It would be advisable to perform parallel analyses in other areas of Poland and take into account the respondents' education and place of residence. (shrink)

SummaryIn the formative period of London's scientific instrument industry membership of a guild was a necessary step towards owning a business in the City. Through the guilds' formal system of apprenticeship, boys received first-class training in a skilled trade, and learned essential marketing and managerial techniques. By analysing the guilds' records of apprenticeship and subsequent guild life it is possible to determine chains of masters and apprentices by which the knowledge passed from generation to generation. At the same time, (...) dates can be established for the training and subsequent working life of many known makers. The chains of knowledge reveal new and often important masters who were previously unknown because, by chance, their instruments or advertisements have not survived to the present day. Two guilds have been used to illustrate the chains: Broderers' Company and Joiners' Company. (shrink)

This article uses a case study of vocational training in Norway to explore the conditions under which employers will cooperate to increase the skill level of their workforce. It generates two sets of insights into the political economy of training in coordinated market economies. First, by demonstrating that cooperation among employers was a recent achievement that required the creation of specific, targeted mechanisms, it suggests that a cooperative outcome is difficult to attain, even amid the generally hospitable institutional (...) environment characteristic of these economies. Second, it demonstrates that the employer collective action problem with respect to the initial training of apprentices differs from that posed by the additional raining of experienced workers. This means that even within a single economy, there are several varieties of training politics, each characterized by different patterns of cooperation and conflict; this further complicates the task of creating a coordinated training regime. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Randall Allsup, “Music Teacher Quality and Expertise”Bennett ReimerI am delighted to have this opportunity to reflect on Randall Allsup’s excellent, incisive, and wise paper. The issues he raises reach to the core of who we have been, where we are now, and how we must adapt ourselves to new challenges that deeply question both our ideals and our practices.Allsup’s opening questions relate directly to the most pressing (...) matters our profession is now facing—questions philosophical in essence. What kind of music teachers do our students deserve? What is the purpose of public education? And how do we get beyond our continuing and understandable desire for better-trained music teachers to ask the more pertinent question of what constitutes effective music teaching and learning in what the musical world is swiftly becoming. He has the courage to address this level of complexity seriously, and to make significant progress toward clarification. That deserves my respect and, I am quite sure, the respect of all of us.Allsup approaches his central premise on the significant changes needed in our professional identity by reminding us that we have “a long and distinguished [End Page 108] commitment to teaching and teachers.” That commitment, however, is based on the established assumption that music education is founded on excellence of performance as its ultimate goal and its greatest value. To achieve this musical end, he points out, requires mastery, attained through prolonged, careful apprenticeship. This “long running pedagogy of mastery and excellence appears closed to, or at least hostile to, innovation and popular input.”In addition, he argues, this belief system embroils all of us, teachers and their students, in the dichotomy of, on the one hand, replication of existing excellence as our goal, and, on the other, the need for emancipation from what was and what is, toward what might be; the need, that is, for transformation. The past, he recognizes, cannot simply be ignored: it is too precious for that. The future, however, also cannot be excluded. Within this antinomy we must find our way, honoring the past while not allowing it to constrict our future.At this point in his exposition Allsup approaches the proposition he is harboring, a proposition I want to explore for its potential in both clarity and complication. The basis of his key proposal is our need for teachers who are able “to think openly and less certainly about the design and implementation of musical instruction. Our pluralistic society,” he continues, “makes it imperative that we multiply the methods employed in the pursuit and construction of knowledge.”To accomplish this, Allsup presents a foundational dichotomy. There are “open forms of music” relating to “new and evolving ways of aesthetic participation that break with our traditional processes and our established codes and standards.” Contrasting with open forms are “closed forms,” representing the authoritative, the certain, and the canonic. “Closed forms,” he says, “represent culturally-structured and norm-driven literacies, where valuations of goodness pre-exist any aesthetic encounters.” Closed forms, he argues, are based on culturally agreed-upon modes of participation that are rigid in nature, such as in the prescribed and proscribed sequence of musical events proceeding inexorably in the order of composer-conductor-performer-audience.Such past (and present) rigidities, he points out, have become increasingly irrelevant. In every dimension of our lives significant and fast-occurring changes have become dominant, even expected, leaving us, as citizens and as educators, in confusion and uncertainty, and therefore in distress. We encounter aesthetic forms that are open-sourced and de-authored, unconnected to shared standards of practice. Technologies of music making and taking, he points out, have overthrown tradition to a startling degree, erasing distinctions among expert and amateur, between master and apprentice, between process and product, specialist and generalist, the classical and the vernacular.All this, and much more, is argued cogently and, I think, persuasively. It leads us to a central conception influencing how we must act as professionals. Our [End Page 109] obligation is to not only incorporate openness of musical engagements into our present culture of musical “closedness,” but to recognize the advent of openness as being a... (shrink)

One of the significant roles performed by the higher degree research supervisor is to assist students to prepare their dissertations for examination. At a time when there is increasing interest in how the academy manages the transition of creative arts HDR candidates from apprentice to peer, there is also concern about the processes, practices, and policies associated with this largely under-researched area of research training. In a recent national Office of Learning and Teaching funded project, we investigated the (...) policy expectations, expert and peer beliefs and expectations, and examiners’ practice around HDR examination, and canvassed the creative arts academic community for their recommendations on best practice in the examination of creative arts doctorates. An unexpected finding was the role of the HDR supervisor in relation to these key areas, and the impact of supervisors upon the examination of students’ theses. This article presents our findings with special reference to the role, understandings, and aspirations of HDR supervisors in the context, and process, of preparing their students for creative arts HDR examination. (shrink)

This article aimed to highlight the reasons for a criticism by the Irish writer Clive Staples Lewis towards the direction of youth education in Europe, notably in the United Kingdom, in the 20th century. His criticism gained as his main thesis what the writer called “the abolition of man”, resulting from an educational system that promotes an alleged rationality that prevented the development of an intermediate element in the human being between the cerebral and the visceral. For Lewis, that intermediate (...) element is the emotions that, well trained, endow the intellect with capacities to deal with the mere animal organism. For this purpose, our starting point in this work was outlined by the cut of a broader work, which consists of an exhibition that, in general, highlights some guidelines that point to the composition of a Philosophy of Education in C. S. Lewis. We seek to collect, initially, the elements of a philosophical anthropology, collected directly, by an interpretative procedure, from the vast work of the author in question, particularly The Abolition of Man, Pure and Simple Christianity, The Weight of Glory, Christian Reflections, The Four Loves, Letters from a Devil to His Apprentice, God in the Dock, Ethics to Live Better, Christian Reflections, among others. In addition to these texts used as a direct source, we also take the work of Gabrielle Greggersen, entitled The Philosophical Anthropology of C. S. Lewis, where the author makes an interpretive incursion into the author’s fictional literature texts, as well as the works biographies of Alister MacGrath, Conversing with Lewis and The Life of C. S. Lewis, in which the Irish philosopher’s life and work are richly detailed. Keywords: C. S. Lewis. Philosophy. Education. Philosophy of education. Philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

This article addresses the pedagogical practices of the Worshipful Company of Barber-Surgeons of London during the seventeenth century. As artisans—trained by apprenticeship—their teaching and learning was embedded in the embodied actions performed in their anatomy theatre. The Barber-Surgeons held regular public anatomies for the benefit and ‘greater learning’ of the masters and apprentices of the Company, performed on the bodies of up to four felons per annum granted to them by the sovereign. The space in which these anatomies were performed (...) and the practices by which that knowledge was imparted, shaped the ways in which the human body was understood—in a slow and uneven process—by which the body was subjected to a process of abstraction. (shrink)

This article probes key issues that remain unexplored, misconstrued, or unsettled in the guild-organized soapmaking industry in Constantinople, as they relate to its organization, modus operandi, and the degree of state intervention. Neither the state nor the guild attempted to micromanage the firms' activities, as the number and size of workshops, the number of hired workers, production methods, quantity and quality of output were outside their purview. Prices and wages were determined by market forces. Training of apprentices was streamlined (...) to match the industry's capacity. Proliferation of small scale workshops was due primarily to managerial constraints and limited borrowing capacity — not to deliberate state policy to check enterprise growth. Regulations of agoranomic nature aimed to ensure the orderly function of the marketplace, correct business conduct, and consumer protection. Equality of opportunity rather than equality of economic results was the foundation of the state's industrial policy. (shrink)

ArgumentStudents entered Renaissance universities as apprentices in the craft of books. In the decades around 1500, such university training began to involve not only manuscript circulation, but also the production and the use of books in the new medium of print. Through their role in the crafting of books, I show how a circle of students around Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples gained the experience needed to become bookmen. Students took classroom manuscripts and brought them into print – the new print (...) shop offered students a place in which to exchange labor for credibility as joint authors. (shrink)

In the pursuit of knowledge, Dorion Sagan argues in this dazzlingly eclectic, rigorously crafted, and deliciously witty collection of essays, scientific authoritarianism and philosophical obscurantism are equally formidable obstacles to discovery. As science has become more specialized and more costly, its questing spirit has been constrained by dogma. And philosophy, perhaps the discipline best placed to question orthodoxy, has retreated behind dense theoretical language and arcane topics of learning. Guided by a capacious, democratic view of science inspired by the examples (...) set by his late parents—Carl Sagan, who popularized the study of the cosmos, and Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist who repeatedly clashed with the scientific establishment—Sagan draws on classical and contemporary philosophy to intervene provocatively in often-charged debates on thermodynamics, linear and nonlinear time, purpose, ethics, the links between language and psychedelic drugs, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and the occupation of the human body by microbial others. Informed by a countercultural sensibility, a deep engagement with speculative thought, and a hardheaded scientific skepticism, he advances controversial positions on such seemingly sacrosanct subjects as evolution and entropy. At the same time, he creatively considers a wide range of thinkers, from Socrates to Bataille and Descartes to von Uexküll, to reflect on sex, biopolitics, and the free will of Kermit the Frog. Refreshingly nonconformist and polemically incisive, _Cosmic Apprentice_ challenges readers to reject both dogma and cliché and instead recover the intellectual spirit of adventure that should—and can once again—animate both science and philosophy. (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual rational (...) agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

This historical study aims to explain how the transition from student nurse service to fully qualified “graduate nurse” service in the United States in the 20th century affected assumptions about fundamental patient care in hospital wards and provide historical context for current apprenticeship programs. Through analysis of documents from 1920 when student nurse service, a nurse apprentice model, was the norm to 1960 when the nurse apprentice model was waning in favor of registered nurse service, this study found (...) that the replacement of student nurses with registered nurses led to weakened standardization of fundamental bedside care and the introduction of large numbers of unlicensed nursing assistants. While student nurses could perform all the functions of fully qualified graduate nurses, nursing assistants could not, resulting in a separation of fundamental nursing care from the professional nurse role and changes in assumptions and attitudes toward fundamental care. These changes had a negative effect on fundamental nursing care. New apprenticeship programs provide opportunities for improvement. (shrink)

Adam Smith recommends specialization but I present a problem of when you are stuck with a certain apprentice but they don’t seem suited to your specialism. If you were less specialized or more versatile, you could solve the problem.

Both a Popper biography and an autobiography, Agassi's "A Philosopher's Apprentice" tells the riveting story of his intellectual formation in 1950s London, a young brilliant philosopher struggling with an intellectual giant - father, mentor, and rival, all at the same time. His subsequent rebellion and declaration of independence leads to a painful break, never to be completely healed. No other writer has Agassi's psychological insight into Popper, and no other book captures like this one the intellectual excitement around the (...) Popper circle in the 1950s and the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s - personal, academic, political, all important philosophically. Agassi's Popper - whether one agrees with it or not - is an enormous contribution to scholarship. This second revised edition includes also Popper's and Agassi's last correspondence and, in a postscript it shows Agassi leafing through Popper's archives, reaching a sort of reconciliation, an appropriate ending to the drama. A must read. Malachi Hacohen, Duke University. (shrink)

Ethics training is commonly cited as a primary method for increasing employees ethical decision making and conduct. However, little is known about how the presence of ethics training can enhance other components of an organization's ethical environment such as employees perception of company ethical values. Using a national sample of 313 business professionals employed in the United States, the relationship between ethics training and perceived organizational ethics was explored. The results of the analysis provide significant statistical support (...) for the notion that businesspersons employed in organizations that have formalized ethics training programs have more positive perceptions of their companies ethical context than do individuals employed in organizations that do not. The analysis also indicated that job satisfaction was related to employees attitudes about their ethical context. The managerial implications of the results are outlined, along with the limitations of the study and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

This book is designed to challenge dominant educational discourses on the underachievement of Black children and to engender new understandings in initial teacher education (ITE) about Black children's education and achievement. Based in empirical case study work and theoretical insights drawn from Bourdieu, hooks, Freire, and Giroux, Maylor calls for Black children's underachievement to be (re)theorised and (re)conceptualised within teacher education, and for students and teachers to become more "race"- and "difference"-minded in their practice.

A prominent Zen teacher offers a “direct, penetrating, and powerful” perspective on a popular mind training practice of Tibetan Buddhism (Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain) Lojong is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of working with short phrases (called "slogans") to generate bodhichitta, the heart and mind of enlightened compassion. With roots tracing back to the 900 A.D., the practice has gained more Western adherents over the past two decades, partly due to the influence of American Buddhist teachers like Pema (...) Chödrön. Its effectiveness and accessibility have moved the practice out of its Buddhist context and into the lives of non-Buddhists across the world. It's in this spirit that Norman Fischer offers his unique, Zen-based commentary on the Lojong. Though traditionally a practice of Tibetan Buddhism, the power of the Lojong extends to other Buddhist traditions—and even to other spiritual traditions as well. As Fischer explores the 59 slogans through a Zen lens, he shows how people from a range of faiths and backgrounds can use Lojong to generate the insight, resilience, and compassion they seek. (shrink)

Background: The present study compared the effects of a traditional resistance training and resistance training combined with cognitive task on body composition, physical performance, cognitive function, and plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels in older adults. Methods: Thirty community-dwelling older adults were randomized into TRT and RT+CT. Exercise groups performed a similar resistance training program, twice a week over 16 weeks. Cognitive Training involved performing verbal fluency simultaneously with RT. Exercise sessions were performed 2-3 sets, 8-15 repetitions (...) at 60-70% of 1-repetition maximum. Body composition, physical function, cognitive performance, and BDNF levels were assessed before and after intervention period. Results: The physical performance was similarly improved in response to both TRT and RT+CT. However, exclusive improvements on cognitive function and BDNF levels were observed only after RT+CT. Conclusion: The RT program associated with a cognitive task, improved physical and cognitive performance in healthy older adults. (shrink)