psychology dector

“…for here there is no place that does not see you.  You must change your life.” (from   "Archaic Torso of Apollo" by Rainer Maria Rilke )                                                                                               For a while now, I’ve wanted to explore some other views in addition to The Teacher’s View .  I’ve taken a lot of freedom on these pages to cover a wide swath of subjects.  Truth is, I have always been more student of life than teacher.  Maybe, back in 2007, I should have called this blog The Student’s View .  We are always learning. What’s done is done, and I enjoy the freedom I’ve had on these pages to explore wherever my mind has wandered.  I expect to keep going with The Teacher’s View wel...

My interest in religious iconography goes back to my childhood in Catholic school.   I marveled at the way Catholic crucifixes and statues were always more graphic than our Christian counterparts whose churches often had a plain, wooden cross over the altar.   Catholic churches were known for their often bloody representations of Jesus hanging by nails on the rough wood.   Saints, too, especially martyrs, were depicted with flaming hearts, barbs and wounds, clearly in torturous ecstasy in their pain.   I remember one statue I saw when I was in second grade:   St. Lucy , patron saint of the blind, holding a plate with two eyeballs, visually telling the story of how she either had her eyes gouged out by her tormentors, or dug them out herself as sources of sin. Recently, I attended a dedication of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima on a local corner in my neighborhood.   During the Mass, the priest tried to make the case that Catholic worship of icons was not id...

“The Los Angeles Unified School District has proposed total elimination of its elementary school arts education program. This unprecedented step will reverse a ten-year effort made by the District to restore arts education to its 700,000 students.” Arts For LA , February 6, 2012 In a world without color, no one looks for rainbows after a storm.   No one looks for truth in blue skies.   The word green has no meaning. In a world without beauty, we will once again be people lost in a desert.   In a void, all journeys are stillborn.   Stars in the night sky are ignored.   There is everything mired in nothing. In a world with abstract numbers and words, no one recognizes the poetry falling from trees or the patterns inside us mirroring the universe.   There is no cohesion, no connection.   We wait patiently in the dark by dead telephones for a voice we have not been taught to hear. In a world without song, we lose the ability to fly.   We grumble and m...

In his book, Except When I Write: Reflections of A Recovering Critic (Oxford University Press, 2011) , Arthur Krystal displays a dexterity and charm with the essay in general, the literary essay in particular, that few can match these days. He does not write down to the reader or condescend. He simply gives us an education with wit and verve, never making us feel we are being schooled. The book begins with an author’s note explaining a concept readers of the prose essay going back to Montaigne will surely recognize: essayists often write in order to think. Great reading inspires great thinking, the two traveling hand in hand. It is no wonder a student once went to university to read the law or to read history. Long before there were general education requirements and majors and minors, there was reading. And of course, there was writing. Reading naturally pairs with writing, subject and predicate, yin and yang, Batman and Robin. Get the picture? Krystal uses this dynamic duo to launc...

So much attention has been given to our failing elementary and high schools lately. We face a barrage of depressing tidbits on a daily basis: falling test scores, dismal teaching, sexual misconduct, financial ruin. It should come as no surprise, then, that our college and university system, the envy of the world, is facing significant challenges as well. In their recent book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Out Kids—And What We Can Do About It (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011), Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus have little positive information to offer us. Instead, they give us a scathing analysis of failure, corruption, and lost ideals. In the 4352 colleges and universities in this country, an undergraduate degree now costs, on average, $250,000. Students often face enormous loan debt upon graduation, sometimes in the six figure range, and recent economic reports tell us that student loan debt is now outpacing all other financial obligations. Some economi...

Ann McElaney-Johnson was inaugurated as the twelfth president of Mount St. Mary’s College last Friday, March 16 th , 2012 .   The ceremony took place at St. Vincent ’s Catholic Church in the West Adams district of Los Angeles, next door to the Mount’s Doheny Campus.   The church was standing room only for the nearly two hour service, with 500 students clad in yellow lining the aisles.   Honored guests included many civic and religious leaders as well as academics from a number of universities and colleges.   Ms. McElaney-Johnson was led into the church by a procession of alumnae, faculty, and students.   The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet who founded the college in 1925 provided a sense of scope and history to the occasion as the school embarked on a new era of education for women in Los Angeles .   The entire procession and ceremony streamed live on the internet and can be accessed for replay here . St. Vincent ’s is one of the most beautiful chur...

I have become acutely aware of trees. Robert Frost used them as a recurring motif in his poetry . If one wishes to sustain the health of the planet, he risks being branded a “tree hugger.” Is that a bad thing? Many nights this past winter, I sat up in front of the fire, the red glow bouncing off the walls, the ghosts of history all around, whispering out of the darkness.   The flames popped and hissed through the textured wood, warming the room against the chill, bringing comfort and dreams. I taught a class last fall where I would give my students a topic to write about and turn them loose for twenty minutes to create.   While they tapped away at their laptops, I watched the trees outside the window, huge old Eucalypti, swaying in the wind off the ocean.   I felt as if they were whispering to me, calling my name, telling me that although I have loved being in the classroom for a long time, maybe I needed to break away.   Maybe I needed to be elsewhere, to go off an...