A Pedagogue's Progress |
Friday, January 25, 2008
A welcome move Dartmouth is now need-blind for international students, a move that will hopefully encourage more people to apply there. Monday, January 21, 2008
The fourth university Wayne Soon's post on Singapore Angle got me thinking again about a liberal arts college as our fourth university. I'd love to see this happening, but something tells me we'll be getting a souped-up polytechnic instead: the policy-makers who matter like Lui Tuck Yew didn't attend places like Dartmouth and Williams, and for the most part didn't do their bachelor's degrees in the US (graduate degrees don't count). They just won't get it, I suspect. They ought to be reading John Henry Newman, Allan Bloom, James Freedman, and Martha Nussbaum; but they'll end up merely thinking of the usual economic imperatives -- ignoring the contributions made by US liberal arts graduates to the world's most powerful economy. In any case, haven't we moved beyond the profit motive? Shouldn't we be moving in that direction? Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Wilsonian Moment A clear and concise read. Unfortunately, Manela does not cover Wilson's impact on Southeast Asian nationalism and "limits" himself to Egypt, India, China, and Korea. Given France's centrality to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, it would have been nice if he'd looked at a French colony, like Indochina, for instance. Still, it's not hard to imagine how the Wilsonian moment played itself out in Vietnam, the East Indies, and Burma. Manela starts off the book with an anecdote on Ho Chi Minh in Paris that I shall use in the future. It's a pity that the syllabus is so inward-looking and regards the influence of external developments on the development of nationalism as peripheral, i.e. as worthy of only passing mention in essays. Monday, January 14, 2008
Stop the press! Hitchens has given up smoking. The next thing you know, he'll be a teetotaller. He and Bill Clinton also dated the same person at Oxford (though, as he points out, not at the same time). Thursday, January 10, 2008
Saturday, January 05, 2008
09A01A Monday, 8.30 am. Can't wait. I wonder if I should enter by the back door like Robin Williams did in Dead Poets' Society -- whistling. Alas, J3SR13 has no back door, and I can't whistle! |
WHO AM I? Your author graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 having majored in History and English. From June 2007, he will be teaching contemporary Southeast Asian history at another of his former schools. SOME WEBSITES I READ The Dartmouth Observer Singapore Websites The Intelligent Singaporean Mr Wang Says So Mr Brown Singabloodypore Singapore Angle Singapore Window A Xenoboy in Sg Gayle Goh Aaron Ng Molly Meek Elia Diodati Stressed Teacher Tym Blogs Too! Yawning Bread Talking Cock Non-Singapore Websites Andrew Sullivan The Belgravia Dispatch The American Scene Oxblog The Corner Bradford Plumer Matthew Yglesias The Washington Monthly National Review Online The Weekly Standard The Plank Open University Marty Peretz Michael Totten Martin Kramer Daniel Drezner Joe's Dartblog Instapundit Christopher Hitchens Ross Douthat IvyGate Les Belles Lettres Arts & Letters Daily The Atlantic Monthly History News Network Guardian Unlimited Books London Review of Books The New Criterion Voice of the Shuttle New York Review of Books ARCHIVES September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 November 2009 July 2010 October 2010  |