education Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Liberty through Education (1898)

April 9, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

LA LIBERTÉ Par L’ENSEIGNEMENT (L’ÉCOLE LIBERTAIRE) [Temps Nouveaux, 1898] En matière d’éducation et d’enseignement, l’Autorité a pour effet d’accaparer l’homme chez l’enfant, au moment où son jugement est sans force, sa mémoire vide, son imagination naïve et sans défiance. Pour déprimer la, raison au détriment de la liberté, elle s’est emparée de l’intelligence et de la volonté pour les enchaîner, insensiblement et par une longue habitude, de préjugés, de scrupules et d’entraves sans nombre. L’État, après l’Église, comprenant fort bien que l’homme se ressent toute sa vie de l’influence subie durant son passage à l’école, s’est arrogé le droit d’étendre […]

Proudhon Seminar for 2010?

April 28, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been thinking, off and on, about running the What is Property? seminar again this summer — and continuing it on past the First Memoir to some of the material that has been translated since the first seminar. The notion has become increasingly appealing in recent days, as I have found a number of places where it seems to me Tucker’s translations could be significantly improved upon. So I’m curious — is there interest in wading into — or back into — Proudhon’s property writings, in a semi-formal setting? with a “textbook” edition of the writings, highlighting some of the […]

Radical History night at Laughing Horse

August 9, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur

A new weekly event, at Laughing Horse Books! R@dical History SeriesMAJOR MOMENTS, MINOR MOVEMENTS, LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS, CONTROVERSIES, AND CHARACTERS. EACH WEEK: A SHORT, INFORMAL PRESENTATION, FOLLOWED BY COFFEE-DRINKING AND DISCUSSION. AUGUST TOPICS: 8/12: P.-J. Proudhon and “Property is theft!” (Theme and Variations) A survey of the uses to which Proudhon put his famous phrase. 8/19: Panarchy and Pantarchy: Hierarchy in a free society P. E. Depuydt and Stephen Pearl Andrews push the envelope of anarchy. 8/26: Anarchists as Inventors: From desk-top publishing 1830-style to the Lysander Spooner’s “elastic bottom.” With Shawn P. Wilbur (Laughing Horse Collective, Alliance of the Libertarian […]

Plans and Prospects

November 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

As many of you know, I’ll be relocating from Ohio to Oregon sometime in the late spring/early summer of 2008. Teaching work has dried up out here, so it seems like time to move. I’ll be close to my parents and to a number of friends from Ohio who moved out there. Even if I stay poor, there will be mountains in the background, which is a big consolation for a guy who’s been living on an ancient lake bed for eighteen years. All of this has, of course, meant a little shuffling of priorities. I have access to resources […]

Onward and upward!

November 3, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m obviously disappointed about the early cancellation of the “Roots of American Anarchism” course, but I’ve also already done much of the work to make the course possible. I had already started breaking the graduate-level course down into undergrad/continuing education-sized bites. What I am currently trying to make happen is a 12-week course covering European philosophical roots, Fourier, some early Proudhon, the 1826 Mutualist, John Gray, Paul Brown, Thomas Skidmore and a lot of Josiah Warren. This would be an expansion of the early phases of the announced course and, if successful, would probably be followed by a similar course […]

Educational counter-institutions, I

October 31, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Thanks to those who have responded, either on the blog or through email, to my post on the “Roots of American Anarchism” course. I suspect that our pilot course online will fall somewhere between self-paced instruction and a basic online seminar, or, more likely, that we’ll end up offering both options. There is no reason not to offer options tailored to a variety of learning styles and schedules. I’m open, and I think a viable educational counter-institution has to be open, to a great deal of user-customization of the process. That means being willing to provide a bare minimum, as […]

“Roots of American Anarchism” course, and Beyond(?)

October 22, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Well, it looks now like a fairly sure thing that I’ll be teaching a graduate-level course on “The Roots of American Anarchism.” This course is really concerned with the roots of the American anarchist traditions, and with their earliest flowerings. I’ve been half-joking that I would follow the development only up to about the time that the term “anarchism” came into widespread use. In realtity, I’ll go a little further than that, but not a lot. The course is for students of American Culture Studies, but we’ll also spend quite a bit of time looking at European sources.I’m pretty excited […]

Evolution? Ah, What the Heck. Teach the Controversy.

August 16, 2005 Shawn P. Wilbur

But teach it well! I’ve been reading a lot of new responses to the attempts to get “intelligent design” included in science curricula. There’s obviously a lot of concern out there that students will no longer be taught properly scientific theories about species development–and with good reason. But my greatest concern, reading the highly polarized debate, is that we appear to be doing a pretty lousy job of teaching evolution right now. Arguments about evolution are hardly ever just scientific arguments. Most of us recognize immediately that this is true about the controversies between the current neo-Darwinian orthodoxy and such […]