Category Archives: Education
On Democracies and Death Cults – Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th April 2025Douglas Murray has written an analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict that focuses on the war in Gaza as a starting point. As the title suggests, he believes the struggle is between a society committed to life and another that views death and martyrdom as the ultimate achievement of existence. The slender volume, it contains less…
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Plagiarize
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th December 2023Plagiarism has become a hot button. The topic’s recent history is well-known to most people. I got the idea for this post from a source I will not acknowledge to remain constant with the subject’s tone. Tom Lehrer was a satirist who was popular a half-century or so back. One of his songs “Lobachevsky” was…
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On Education
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th June 2023That American education is bereft of meaning in all but the most cloistered areas of its purview is self-evident. Little Liam and Olivia not only don’t know the three Rs by the 6th grade, they likely don’t even know what they are. Many of them and their like will sail through on the SS Ignoble…
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Too Much Bread
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st January 2023Man does not live by it alone, but too much makes him obese. Not just physically fat, but mentally flabby as well. Until about the last 80 years the main human activity was devoted to survival. Hobbes famous declaration that in a state of nature – ie, one without government – life would be solitary,…
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Alma Mater Bans Language
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th December 2022Not to be outdone by the parvenu institution on the west coast (Stanford for those of you who are not au courant), my alma mater and that of my children has decided to go full frontal and has banned language. As a loyal alum, I can not name the institution as it no longer has…
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On the Practice of Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th May 2021As a student, trainee, educator, scientist, practitioner, and occasionally as a patient, I have observed medicine as an insider for close to two-thirds of a century. While the power of medical technology has grown exponentially over this span, the general principles of medical practice remain the same. My subject is the interplay between these two…
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On Equality
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th August 2020We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… This self evident truth is obviously not self evident. Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly knew such to be the case. He meant that we all should be equal before the law and that the laws should be designed without bias or special benefit not thought…
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Everybody Should Get the Gold
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st June 2020Are you lost daddy? I asked tenderly.Shut up he explained. Ring Lardner Un pour tous, tous pour un is the motto of Duma père’s The Three Musketeers. Today it has been modified to All for all from some, the second ‘all’ includes only enlightened thinkers. Consider the litany of wide-ranging demands from black students at the University…
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Does a Physician Need to Attend College?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st September 2019There have been a spate of articles about the value of a college education. Most conclude that its value resides solely in a piece of paper that gets its owner a higher paying job. They go on to declare that most jobs really gain nothing from a college education. All of them allow that a…
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From Tolerance to Equality – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th June 2019Subtitled How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage, this book by Darel E Paul examines the phenomenon of same sex marriage, and a lot more. Paul is Professor of Political Science at Williams College – my alma mater and that of my two kids; accordingly I know a lot about its collective attitude. For him…
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