Justice-Centered Humanism
Justice-Centered Humanism

Author: Roy Speckhardt

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1634312104

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Humanists are quick to defend threats to the separation of church and state, but they have not always been consistently unified in engaging with pressing issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality—namely, those linked to economic, environmental, and social justice. Drawing on his tenure as executive director of the American Humanist Association, Roy Speckhardt calls for humanists everywhere to center justice in their humanism by promoting public policy based on ethical humanist principles. Acknowledging the challenges inherent to this type of advocacy and activism—such as balancing short-term needs with long-term goals, and espousing a common humanity without erasing differences—he makes a compelling case for championing justice-centered humanism. He also provides guidance for doing so, whether on the local, state, or federal level. Precisely because there is no such thing as cosmic justice in an afterlife, he reminds, it's especially important that humanists everywhere combat injustice in this life.

Centering Humanism in STEM Education
Centering Humanism in STEM Education

Author: Bryan Dewsbury

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 2832554660

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Research demonstrates that STEM disciplines perpetuate a history of exclusion, particularly for students with marginalized identities. This poses problems particularly when science permeates every aspect of contemporary American life. Institutions’ repeated failures to disrupt systemic oppression in STEM has led to a mostly white, cisgender, and male scientific workforce replete with implicit and/or explicit biases. Education holds one pathway to disrupt systemic linkages of STEM oppression from society to the classroom. Maintaining views on science as inherently objective isolates it from the world in which it is performed. STEM education must move beyond the transactional approaches to transformative environments manifesting respect for students’ social and educational capital. We must create a STEM environment in which students with marginalized identities feel respected, listened to, and valued. We must assist students in understanding how their positionality, privilege, and power both historically and currently impacts their meaning making and understanding of STEM.

When Colorblindness Isn't the Answer
When Colorblindness Isn't the Answer

Author: Anthony B. Pinn

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 163431123X

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The future of the United States rests in many ways on how the ongoing challenge of racial injustice in the country is addressed. Yet, humanists remain divided over what if any agenda should guide humanist thought and action toward questions of race. In this volume, Anthony B. Pinn makes a clear case for why humanism should embrace racial justice as part of its commitment to the well-being of life in general and human flourishing in particular. As a first step, humanists should stop asking why so many racial minorities remain committed to religious traditions that have destroyed lives, perverted justice, and justified racial discrimination. Rather, Pinn argues, humanists must first confront a more pertinent and pressing question: why has humanism failed to provide a more compelling alternative to theism for so many minority groups? For only with a bit of humility and perspective—and a recognition of the various ways in which we each contribute to racial injustice—can we truly fight for justice.

A Manual for Creating Atheists
A Manual for Creating Atheists

Author: Peter Boghossian

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1939578159

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For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith—and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith—but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than 20 years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.

The Humanism of Doctor Who
The Humanism of Doctor Who

Author: David Layton

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0786489448

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From 1963 to 1989, the BBC television program Doctor Who followed a time-traveling human-like alien called "The Doctor" as he sought to help people, save civilizations and right wrongs. Since its 2005 revival, Doctor Who has become a pop culture phenomenon surpassing its "classic" period popularity and reaching a larger, more diverse audience. Though created as a family program, the series has dramatized serious themes in philosophy, science, religion, and politics. Doctor Who's thoughtful presentation of a secular humanist view of the universe stands in stark contrast to the flashy special effects central to most science fiction on television. This examination of Doctor Who from the perspective of philosophical humanism assesses the show's careful exploration of such topics as justice, ethics, good and evil, mythology and knowledge.

Creating Change Through Humanism
Creating Change Through Humanism

Author: Roy Speckhardt

Publisher: Humanist Press

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0931779669

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Humanism is “the radical idea that you can be good without a god.” That’s how Roy Speckhardt, the longtime executive director of the American Humanist Association, defines it. His new book, Creating Change Through Humanism, lays out how and why people can lead moral and ethical lives without belief in a higher power. While surveys show that more and more Americans are giving up on religion, merely abandoning traditional religious faith is just one step on a path to a better way of thinking. Speckhardt explains how to take the next steps with the empathy and activism that characterize humanism today. Humanism has inspired generations of individuals to improve themselves, their communities and their country. Creating Change Through Humanism describes how a humanist lifestance has influenced and can continue to advance acceptance, diversity and equality. Humanist ideals pervaded the U.S. from its founding, starting with the innovative idea of separating church and state to maintain a religiously-neutral government. Humanism has continued to propel our nation toward social progress by promoting basic human rights and dignity. The humanist movement, with its forward-thinking outlook and emphasis on critical thinking and self-reflection, has been at the forefront of such pressing social issues as civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ equality, responsible scientific freedom, and the environment and population dynamics. Speckhardt interweaves personal stories, including his own, of individuals who have journeyed from organized religion to humanistic convictions. He encourages his readers to be open about their own lack of belief and to become active in social and political causes, so they can put their positive values into action and combat the anti-humanist prejudice propagated by the religious right.

Behaving Decently
Behaving Decently

Author: Wayne Laufert

Publisher: Humanist Press

Published: 2022-06-21

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0931779871

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Kurt Vonnegut and humanism go hand in hand. In Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanism, Wayne Laufert examines how Vonnegut revealed his moral philosophy through the themes and characters in his work and through his public comments. Topic by topic, Vonnegut’s written and spoken views are explored, from his first novel, Player Piano (1952), through his antiwar masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), to the collections of his fiction and nonfiction that appear up till today, long after his death in 2007. His speeches, essays, interviews, and journalism, which support and expand upon the sentiments in his novels, receive proper consideration in this conversational overview of Vonnegut’s life and career. Religion, war, politics, science, art—these subjects and more are seen through Vonnegut’s perspective and are placed within a larger humanistic outlook. His most famous creation, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, gets his own chapter too. Vonnegut called himself a “Christ-worshiping agnostic,” a term that Behaving Decently analyzes in the context of his upbringing as a freethinker, his wartime experience, his time in the corporate world, and other factors that formed his values. Those values are perhaps best expressed by his character Eliot Rosewater, the damaged, super-rich philanthropist: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Vonnegut’s real and imagined selves were incorporated into Kurt Vonnegut the author, the public speaker, the interview subject, and even the character that appears in some of his books. After all, he wrote, “I myself am a work of fiction.” That funny, wise, sometimes depressed persona was humanistic. Behaving Decently shows the reader how Kurt Vonnegut reminded us to take small steps along hopeful paths to kindness and community and dignity and art—and farting around.

Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning
Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning

Author: Norbert M. Seel

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2011-10-05

Total Pages: 3643

ISBN-13: 1441914277

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Over the past century, educational psychologists and researchers have posited many theories to explain how individuals learn, i.e. how they acquire, organize and deploy knowledge and skills. The 20th century can be considered the century of psychology on learning and related fields of interest (such as motivation, cognition, metacognition etc.) and it is fascinating to see the various mainstreams of learning, remembered and forgotten over the 20th century and note that basic assumptions of early theories survived several paradigm shifts of psychology and epistemology. Beyond folk psychology and its naïve theories of learning, psychological learning theories can be grouped into some basic categories, such as behaviorist learning theories, connectionist learning theories, cognitive learning theories, constructivist learning theories, and social learning theories. Learning theories are not limited to psychology and related fields of interest but rather we can find the topic of learning in various disciplines, such as philosophy and epistemology, education, information science, biology, and – as a result of the emergence of computer technologies – especially also in the field of computer sciences and artificial intelligence. As a consequence, machine learning struck a chord in the 1980s and became an important field of the learning sciences in general. As the learning sciences became more specialized and complex, the various fields of interest were widely spread and separated from each other; as a consequence, even presently, there is no comprehensive overview of the sciences of learning or the central theoretical concepts and vocabulary on which researchers rely. The Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning provides an up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the specific terms mostly used in the sciences of learning and its related fields, including relevant areas of instruction, pedagogy, cognitive sciences, and especially machine learning and knowledge engineering. This modern compendium will be an indispensable source of information for scientists, educators, engineers, and technical staff active in all fields of learning. More specifically, the Encyclopedia provides fast access to the most relevant theoretical terms provides up-to-date, broad and authoritative coverage of the most important theories within the various fields of the learning sciences and adjacent sciences and communication technologies; supplies clear and precise explanations of the theoretical terms, cross-references to related entries and up-to-date references to important research and publications. The Encyclopedia also contains biographical entries of individuals who have substantially contributed to the sciences of learning; the entries are written by a distinguished panel of researchers in the various fields of the learning sciences.