Why don't the adults in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" support the boy who commented on the emperor's decidedly missing wardrobe? Why don't more people practice the independent judgment of that boy?The answer is fear, real or imagined, of what might happen to them.More often than not, our fears of expressing independent judgment stem from what others might think of us. Disapproval, maybe rejection, is the worst that might happen, yet the anxiety caused by self-dou...

Synthesizing ideas from such disparate thinkers as educator Maria Montessori, philosophers John Dewey and Ayn Rand, and Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism presents a philosophy of education-the theory of concentrated attention and independent judgment-that requires laissez-faire capitalism for its full realization. It is not an argument, except indirectly, for the separation of education and state nor is it a critique of present and past state-run school...

Applying Principles is a collection of short essays published between January 2007 and December 2016 as monthly blogposts at jerrykirkpatrick.blogspot.com. The author's aim was to write interdisciplinary, serious posts to inspire critical thinking. Topics, grouped as chapters, range from capitalism and politics to epistemology, academia, education, psychology, youth sports, and the arts.The title derives from the author's thirty-six years as educator in the applied science of busin...

How can a valid theory of universals provide a defense of the free society?By defending our ability to know reality-to guide our choices and actions to grow, thrive, and prosper.Such a theory allows us to validate all the essential concepts required to explain and fight for the free society, the social system of laissez-faire capitalism, because every word we use, excluding proper nouns, is universal."Human," "dog," and "rocket" in the Engl...

Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on economic concepts and topics. This volume addresses the economic and business aspects of her writings. The authors of this anthology are from a variety of fields and all of them are enthusiastic supporters of her ideas.

This book builds on two current developments in psychology scholarship and practice. The first centers on broad discontent with the individualist tradition in which the rational agent, or autonomous self, is considered the fundamental atom of social life. Critique of individualism spring not only from psychologists working in the academy, but also from communities of therapy and counseling. The second, and related development from which this work builds, is the search for alternatives to i...

Developed from the author’s long teaching career, How to Rethink Human Behavior aims to cultivate practical skills in human observation and analysis, rather than offer a catalogue of immutable ‘facts’. It synthesizes key psychological concepts with insights from other disciplines, including sociology, social anthropology, economics, and history.The skills detailed in the book will help readers to observe people in their contexts and to analyze what they observe, in order t...

The challenge this book addresses is to demonstrate how, in teaching content knowledge, the development of intellectual and moral dispositions as virtues is not merely a good idea, or peripheral to that content, but deeply embedded in the logic of searching for knowledge and truth.It offers a powerful example of how philosophy of education can be brought to bear on real problems of educational research and practice – pointing the reader to re-envision what it means to educate child...

US psychologist Abraham H. Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation is a classic of psychological research that helped change the field for good. Like many field-changing thinkers, Maslow was not just a talented researcher, he was also a creative thinker – able to see things from a new perspective and show them in a different light.At a time when psychology was dominated by two major schools of thought, Maslow was able to forge a new, third paradigm, that remains influential ...

Doing Valuable Time explores the human concern with expending our life's time well. We pursue what we take to be valuable, strive to live meaningfully, judge whether our present circumstances are good enough, and have standards for what we are willing to take an interest in. Doing valuable time, however, is not an easy task. Expending time on big, important life-projects often entails lots of little time expenditures on the seemingly meaningless, and our ability to take an interes...

Bridging the gap between psychology and politics, Lichtenberg presents a powerful argument for applying the methods and insights of the Gestalt perspective to social and political problems. Focusing on the inner dynamics of power and abuse relationships, this thoughtful treatment of victim/oppressor fusion has stimulated new thinking about abuse, exploitation, and the processes and methods essential to personal and political change.

"What is wrong with our schools?" is the question everyone seems to be asking, or more like screaming nowadays. Standard answers point to everything from school funding to unions to bureaucracies and more. In this book, Daniel Buck provides a different answer: flawed ideas - ideas about instruction, curriculum, even human nature itself - are the root cause of American schooling's dysfunction.Touching on philosophy, contemporary educational studies, cognitive science, and his own ex...