Newsletter: Theater Ideas
December 27, 2024 - January 2, 2025
Happy New Year! Here are a couple of my thoughts, including one I just posted today:
A Different Vision of Education (December 30)
I used to tell my students that I would consider myself a failure if any of them became little versions of me. I was here, I said, to help them fully become themselves. The task isn’t “to teach them how to do it,” it’s “to teach them how THEY do it.”
January 1
Quotation: “Along with Joseph Addison, Shaftesbury paved the way for a new approach to English writing, pioneering a kind of polite and entertaining essay aimed at the educated classes.” – A Philosophy of Beauty by Michael B. Gill
Have we ever had anything approaching such a tradition in America? Maybe E B White? Although he wasn’t necessarily writing for the “educated classes.” But the educated classes in the early 18th century might have meant “those who could read.”
This is sort of crabby, but…
I like Austin Kleon’s idea of keeping track the books he didn’t read (h/t Alan Jacobs). I just DNF’d after about 120 pages The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown. An extended episode of Scooby Doo.
January 2
Yesterday, I tried to write an actual essay about an essay I read, but it came out so turgid I deep-sixed it. So I published Notes Toward an Article on the Arts and Effective Altruism That I Didn't Post in order to give you the general gist of thing. Trust me, the written version was abysmal.
That’s all for me this week!