Philosophy

Centennial's school board is planning to draft a new "Philosophy of Education," and the prospect has some parents worried. About 50 parents attended Tuesday's board meeting to voice their concern that the board's new philosophy would eliminate special academic programs in an effort to educate all children equally. Centennial has been discussing rewriting its philosophy for several years, William Tennent High School Principal Kenneth D. Kastle has said. A final revision could be years away, board members said Tuesday.

The Upper Merion Area school board hopes that visitors will characterize its high school students as active learners with intellectual curiosity who are being rigorously challenged in their classes. These were some of the descriptions included in Upper Merion Area High School's recently written philosophy statement that the school board unanimously approved Monday night. The statement and a list of goals for the high school are needed for next year's evaluation by the Middle States Association, a regional group that accredits schools in the mid-Atlantic states.

Wilhelm Halbfass, 60, professor of Indian philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and a giant in his field, died of a brain hemorrhage May 25 at Bryn Mawr Hospital. He lived in Narberth. Professor Halbfass taught at Penn for the last 27 years after stints at universities in Canada, India, and his native Germany. He also authored seven books, which are considered major sources and references in Indian and Asian philosophies. He visited India nearly two dozen times, meeting scholars at universities and cultural institutes, his family said.

Remember how revealing it was to hear Richard Nixon's real voice - the tone and . . . uhmmm . . . vocabulary he used when talking informally to his associates? There was a portrait! And it would not have been possible without the advent of audio tape. Listeners can get as vivid - though hardly as lurid - a picture of Alan W. Watts from a new tape, Man, Nature and the Nature of Man (90 minutes, $10.95) from Audio Renaissance. It is a collection of excerpts from the speeches of Watts, one of the foremost Western interpreters of Eastern thought.

Magic - with a bit of philosophy - touches the lives of some children, crops and cows growing on the slopes and valleys in northern Chester County. The magic is different for every advocate of Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of a "spiritual science" that went beyond the boundaries of conventional science. Steiner's philosophy of anthroposophy, from the Greek words for man and wisdom, includes a system of agriculture known as biodynamics, a combination of the Greek words for life and energy.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The NFL is a league that adapts with unforgiving ease, a fundamental truth that was hammered home in an opening-night slugfest that offered a loud glimpse at what it is going to take to win the NFC East this season. Last year, the Giants and the Cowboys combined to score 116 points in the eight quarters they faced each other. On Wednesday night, they spent the first two quarters of 2012 battering each other into the MetLife Stadium Turf, the front sevens of both defenses dictating the action.

Shannon Maloney had already earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but she returned to Lehigh University for a fifth year to complete a second major she knows will make her more employable: Philosophy. Yep, philosophy. Though philosophy is routinely dismissed and disparaged - as useless as English, as dead as Latin, as diminished as library science - more college students are getting degrees in that field than ever before. Though the overall figures remain small, the number of four-year graduates has grown 46 percent in a decade, surpassing the growth rates of much bigger programs such as psychology and history.

The Centennial school board has appointed a committee of administrators, teachers and parents to develop a philosophy of education for the district. At Tuesday night's meeting, outgoing board president Joan Jankowsky announced the formation of the committee that has been charged with "developing a philosophy of education which is consistent with the board's mission statement. " Jankowsky said the committee has been asked to submit its proposal to the board by June 30. The committee has10 members, including three administrators, two teachers, two parents and three board members.

As he leans over his lunch at Bleu, the fashionable restaurant on Rittenhouse Square, 31-year-old English author Alain de Botton begs to differ. His successful new nonfiction book, The Consolations of Philosophy (Vintage, $13), is not what it seems. "It's a slight bugbear to be described as someone who's written a book popularizing philosophy," the tall, slim and still single man of letters says good-naturedly. "In my grander moments, I think I've tried to be more ambitious than that.

Matthew Lipman looks as if he would be most at home with a volume of Aristotle or Kant on his lap. Indeed, Lipman, a philosophy professor who has the demeanor of a longtime scholar, has studied some of the world's most abstruse texts at Columbia University, Stanford University and the Sorbonne. Judging from his book-lined office in Montclair, N.J., it appears that he spends his time immersed in metaphysics. It bears little evidence of his other major preoccupation: children. "Kids aren't supposed to have ideas," Lipman, 64, said recently, sitting in the small building at Montclair State College that houses his most widely recognized achievement: the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children.

Wisdom from Jack Smalley, 7, the most philosophical second grader in America: Jack's prizewinning philosophy: Which is more powerful, love or hate? "It's very powerful to hate, but it feels better to love. You shouldn't hate someone because they're different. It doesn't matter what they look like, it only matters how they act. Fear causes hate and love is fearless. That is why I think love is more powerful than hate. " Favorite philosopher: Socrates. "I like what he said, 'The wise man admits he knows nothing.' You can't go around saying, 'I'm the smartest ever,' because you always have something else to learn.

James P. Cooney, 68, of Harleysville, a professor of English and philosophy at Montgomery County Community College, died Saturday, Jan. 19, of complications from kidney cancer at home. In his 46 years as an educator, Mr. Cooney turned down offers to be dean or vice president. "His focus was always on teaching," said his son, Gregory Cooney of Flagstaff, Ariz. "It was important for him for people to never go without education. " Mr. Cooney taught through the end of the fall semester and had no intention of retiring, his son said.

LAST YEAR, the Temple Owls just missed out on a chance to dance in the NCAA Women's Tournament. Now, coach Tonya Cardoza faces a new challenge heading into the 2012-2013 season: dealing with the six freshmen who now call North Broad home. "Everyday is going to be a new experience," Cardoza said. "It's obviously the first time I've ever had to deal with it, and it's been frustrating at times, but you just have to have patience, you've got to understand that this is all new to them and teaching things that they might not ever know that it might take a little longer than normal.

Boy, I sure wish John Galt were president. He'd know how to fix the country! A cross between Jesus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Alan Greenspan, Galt (D.B. Sweeney) is the enigmatic, shadowy power that animates the momentous events in Atlas Shrugged: Part II , the soporific, seemingly interminable second part of a projected three-part adaptation of self-styled philosopher Ayn Rand's sophomoric 1957 novel. The Russian-born Rand used her ungainly, staid novels to impart her libertarian philosophy.

Credit the man in the arena Tony Danza's remarks about the state of public education in the United States are absolutely correct ("Tony Danza's school of hard knocks," Sept. 13). The so-called experts who criticize public education, but have never actually taught in a classroom, should heed Theodore Roosevelt's remarks: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The NFL is a league that adapts with unforgiving ease, a fundamental truth that was hammered home in an opening-night slugfest that offered a loud glimpse at what it is going to take to win the NFC East this season. Last year, the Giants and the Cowboys combined to score 116 points in the eight quarters they faced each other. On Wednesday night, they spent the first two quarters of 2012 battering each other into the MetLife Stadium Turf, the front sevens of both defenses dictating the action.

America the Philosophical By Carlin Romano Alfred A. Knopf. 672 pp. $35 By general consent, the great classic of 20th-century American philosophy is John Rawls' Theory of Justice, which appeared in 1971. Bill Clinton once said that when he and Hillary read it in law school, they immediately realized that liberty, equality, and human rights had been established on a "brilliant new foundation of reason. " Around the same time, a pushy Princeton undergraduate with journalistic ambitions asked the mighty philosopher for an interview, only to be turned away with a gentle Harvard smile.

WHAT IS IT about the sports teams in this town that the only one interested in creating a defense-first identity is its pro basketball team? Yes, its pro basketball team. The football team thinks it will win a championship by outscoring you. You can argue the Phillies are defense-first these days, but that's more out of default than design. When they acquired those ace pitchers, it was to complement a high-octane offense, not replace it. The hockey team? I don't know if it has an identity.

URBANDALE, Iowa - Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain sought to sharpen his grasp on national security and foreign policy while campaigning in Iowa Tuesday, a day after botching his answer to a question about his support for the U.S. role in Libya. On his first trip to Iowa since decade-old sexual harassment allegations surfaced, Cain indirectly addressed the foreign policy problem by telling more than 200 people at a northeastern Iowa restaurant that the U.S. needed to leave no doubt about its allies and enemies.

There were 25,000 copies initially printed, but Marc Vetri's new cookbook, Rustic Italian Food , went into its second printing before the Nov. 1 release date. Compare that to Il Viaggio Di Vetri , his first book, which sold 25,000 copies after three years. "I just got a $420 royalty check. . . . my first one, three years later," says the chef, sitting on a broken-in brown leather sofa in his newly renovated home kitchen. After two years of recipe testing, writing, and waiting, Vetri is ready to show the world his latest collection.