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ADVICE AND DISSENT
This section features discussions on education, learning and teaching, and language with particular focus on English. The primary subjects to be taken up here are notable advocacies and contrary viewpoints in these disciplines and their allied fields. Our primary aim is to clarify matters and issues of importance to language and learning, provide intelligent and useful instruction, promote rational and critical thinking, and enhance the individual’s overall capacity for discernment.
No to philosophy of journalism, yes to religion as growth engine
This week we have three highly provocative readings: the first on why American universities don’t offer “Philosophy of Journalism” but persist in running abstruse philosophy courses, the second on the strong relationship between economic prosperity and religious freedom, and the third on the impact of specific religious beliefs on economic growth.
Why journalism doesn’t appeal to professional philosophers
Why is it that the philosophy departments of American universities don’t offer “Philosophy of Journalism” as a staple course despite the ongoing breakneck technological and social revolution in the mass media, yet persist in offering such abstruse courses as “Philosophy of Law,” “Philosophy of Art,” “Philosophy of Science,” and Philosophy of Religion”? In an article for the November 15, 2009 issue of The Chronicle Review, Carlin Romano theorizes that this is probably because journalism has long carried with it an association with superficial intellectual goods—an association that made journalism “unappealing to professional philosophers, whose egos and identities are deeply connected to an image of themselves as intellectually superior to other professionals.”
Read “We Need ‘Philosophy of Journalism’” in The Chronicle Review now!
Why cultural hostility to religious freedom is counterproductive
Meanwhile, in an article for the November 11, 2009 issue of The American (the journal of the American Enterprise Institute), “Economic Prosperity: A Step of Faith,” King’s College politics lecturer Joseph Loconte contends that there is a strong relationship between economic prosperity and religious freedom. He says that as early as the 17th century, Christian reformers had already grasped the importance of freedom of conscience to the stability and economic well-being of the state; in contrast, he says, Arab societies and Muslim leaders have continued to evade admitting that their cultural hostility towards religious freedom and pluralism is a major factor in the economic malaise gripping much of the Muslim and Arab world.
Read “Economic Prosperity: A Step of Faith” in The American now!
And why belief in hell measurably affects economic development
After a close study of 40 years of data from dozens of countries, two Harvard University researchers have found that religion indeed has a measurable effect on developing economies, but that the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell. In “Satan, the Great Motivator: The curious economic effects of religion,” an article in the Boston Globe that he had researched as a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow, Michael Fitzgerald says that a clearer picture has emerged of how the prosperity of nations “can depend, in part, on seemingly abstract concerns like theology and sometimes on quite nuanced points of belief or religious fervor.”
Read “Satan, the Great Motivator” in the Boston Globe now!
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