Arthur E. Lean’s irreverent and con­troversial essays represent the distillation of many ideas about education—ideas developed during most of a lifetime spent in and about schools. In the second edition of this popular work, to which he has added eight new essays, he presents his latest observations on current ele­ments and programs in education—such as the grading system, academic rank, the teaching process, assessment of edu­cational progress—concluding that many of them are not only unnecessary but actually harmful to the (...) very process which they are supposed to serve. Covering a broad spectrum of current issues in its criticism of American edu­cation at all levels, _And Merely Teach _is a book to be read by veteran educator, beginning teacher, and lay citizen alike. Though critical of the teaching profes­sion, Arthur Lean also offers constructive suggestions in the form of practical solu­tions that are urgently needed to save our ailing educational system. (shrink)

Brief survey of Charles Taylor's earlier books, followed by an extensive review of Taylor's A Secular Age, published 2007 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

The structure of the Lorentz transformation depends intimately on the conventional operations for measurement of lengths (L) and time intervals (T). The prescription for length measurement leads to justifiable utilization of Euclidean geometry over finite values of the coordinates. Then T-values can be regarded as ratios of length measurements within a suitably defined clock. In certain cases the synchronization process should be supplemented by measurements providing position certification. The Lorentz transformation emerges from three specific symmetry statements, assured by the nature (...) of the L and T operations: (1) one-one correspondence of finite values of the coordinates of two inertial frames, (2) frame reciprocity, and (3) spatial isotropy. (Light signaling is not needed in this derivation. Afterward, it is assumed that light is indeed an agent moving with the common speed revealed by the transformation.) When rest masses have been determined in the conventional fashion, the conservation of momentum and of energy follow from the kinematics—a result due to Einstein. (shrink)