{"id":18683,"date":"2016-12-14T11:15:33","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T16:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=18683"},"modified":"2016-12-14T11:15:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T16:15:57","slug":"children-cant-handle-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=18683","title":{"rendered":"Children can&#8217;t handle philosophy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was delighted with today&#8217;s rebuttal of this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/opinion\/columns\/4172421-iron-range-educators-view-elementary-high-school-students-simply-arent-ready\">ill thought out think piece<\/a> published in the Trib on December 4th.<\/p>\n<p>I was strongly tempted to write my own critism. Its the second time I&#8217;ve been tempted to argue with this retired Iron Range teacher but I&#8217;m a busy fellow and, as a school board member, I don&#8217;t want to wear out my welcome writing op-eds to the Tribune. This &#8220;educator&#8221; opined that it was a waste of time to teach kids philosophy because their brains weren&#8217;t ready to handle it and more prone to taking stupid risks. Hell, why do we bother to teach them anything other than <em>readin and writin and rithmatic<\/em> before they are old enough for post-graduate studies? <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/opinion\/4179405-response-high-school-students-are-challenge-philosophy\">is a sensible reply<\/a> I second.<\/p>\n<p>A short sample:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Heck, I\u2019m a middle-aged man; we are famous for making bad life choices despite our well-developed brains. Just this summer, against my better judgment, I followed a couple of friends over a dangerous waterfall crossing at Tettegouche State Park. (And I\u2019m still gunning for a sports car.) My fully developed prefrontal cortex may mitigate bad judgments, but it doesn\u2019t immunize me against them.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, my bad choices do not make me a bad philosopher; they just make me human.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was delighted with today&#8217;s rebuttal of this ill thought out think piece published in the Trib on December 4th. I was strongly tempted&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,107,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18685,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683\/revisions\/18685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}