The Burning Mind Project
RSSTwitterFacebook
Join Us

For the mind does not need filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only needs kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.

—Plutarch

  • About
  • The Ten Principles
    • Introduction
    • Civic Responsibility
    • Immediacy
    • Gifting
    • Decommodification
    • Participation
    • Radical Inclusion
    • Radical Self-Expression
    • Communal Effort
    • Leave No Trace
    • Radical Self-Reliance
  • Blog
  • Inspired Words

Preparing Students for a “Post-Work” Economy

By Morgan Benton On September 10, 2016 · Add Comment
What happens when we, as a species, “win” work? One of the primary goals of creativity and innovation since the dawn of time has been to make life easier for people, to allow us to accomplish the everyday tasks of existence–procuring food, providing shelter–with greater ease and efficiency. Up until now, no [...]
Read Full Article →

Do what you DON’T love

By Morgan Benton On September 28, 2015 · 1 Comment
Today I was reading Josh Whiton’s essay, Money is a Neurotransmitter and it reminded me that I needed to share a story of yet another way money has broken our educational system. Since 2009 I have been experimenting with a pedagogy in all of my courses called choose-your-own-grade. In a nutshell, I let [...]
Read Full Article →

How the 10 Principles Help Me Teach Statistics

On May 14, 2015 By Nicole Radziwill
Last month, I published an “informal textbook” to help people more easily learn introductory statistics with the R programming language. The process of developing the book (and refining the course that uses it) was informed by the 10 Principles of Burning Man, basically because they imbue everything I do now. Here’s a short little [...]
Read Full Article →

My Easy Way to Remember the 10 Principles of Burning Man

On May 4, 2015 By Nicole Radziwill
“CC DIGs LPs that are Radical-IER.” (That is, more radical than all the other LPs.) We were giving a talk the other night on applications of the 10 Principles, and I was worried that I’d forget one. Which is not actually a worry, but a likely outcome, based on my past experiences trying to recite [...]
Read Full Article →

5 Ways Grades Kill the Motivation to Learn

On March 11, 2015 By Morgan Benton
Grades kill students' motivation for learning. This post summarizes the 5 reasons that Alfie Kohn gives as to why this is the case.
Read Full Article →

The Mother of All Token Economies: Why Grades ≠ Money

On March 11, 2015 By Morgan Benton
Grades are not money and have little, if any, intrinsic value. We should try to stop shoehorning education into just another segment of our economy. It is not.
Read Full Article →

What do you mean? How Grades Abuse Statistics

On March 11, 2015 By Morgan Benton
In our hearts, we know that grades don't really define us. We sense it every time we get feedback that is in conflict with our gut sense of who we are or what we know. This post exposes one of the most egregious, and ironically unexamined shortcomings of grades, which is at the heart of how they are calculated--the use of the arithmetic mean, i.e. the average.
Read Full Article →

Grades Suck

On March 11, 2015 By Morgan Benton
The use of grades clearly violates the Ten Principles.  Grades are the currency of education, and as such, commodify learning and obstruct gifting, self-expression, self-reliance, and communal effort.  It is difficult to come up with a more powerful symbol of the ways in which our current model of [...]
Read Full Article →

Whose Objective Is It Anyway?

On March 11, 2015 By Morgan Benton
I've come to a very important realization--no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to come up with any set of learning objectives that I'm happy with. Educational objectives mislead students into an overly simplistic understanding of what constitutes “important” knowledge in any particular domain. How can we fix this?
Read Full Article →

Participatory vs. Interactive Art: Your Experiences?

On November 16, 2014 By Nicole Radziwill
(I just posted this on my Facebook timeline, but have reposted it here to be able to collect thoughts and experiences from those of you who aren’t FB friends of mine. Thank you for your consideration!) Dear friends and colleagues, especially Playa/Burning Man artists, musicians, performers, and creatives!! We’d like to enlist your help. Morgan [...]
Read Full Article →
  • ← Previous Entries
  • Our Vision

    Inspire people to share their gifts!
  • Our Mission

    The mission of the Burning Mind Project is to operationalize the gift economy in higher education through the systematic application of the Ten Principles.
  • Our Latest Book

    Statistics (the Easier Way) with R, 2nd Ed.
    Statistics (the Easier Way) with R
    See the 10 Principles applied to statistics education!
    Buy now on Amazon!
  • #burningnerds Tweets
  • Brightly Shining Partners!

                
  • Recent Posts

    • Preparing Students for a “Post-Work” Economy
    • Do what you DON’T love
    • How the 10 Principles Help Me Teach Statistics
    • My Easy Way to Remember the 10 Principles of Burning Man
    • 5 Ways Grades Kill the Motivation to Learn
    • The Mother of All Token Economies: Why Grades ≠ Money
    • What do you mean? How Grades Abuse Statistics
    • Grades Suck
    • Whose Objective Is It Anyway?
    • Participatory vs. Interactive Art: Your Experiences?
  • Contribute

    Do you have insights about how to integrate the value system expressed by the 10 Principles into higher education? Start a discussion at http://www.facebook.com/BurningMindProject or write a guest post for us. Please contact us if you're interested!

The Burning Mind Project

Pages

  • About
  • Blog
  • Inspired Words
  • Support the Movement
  • The Ten Principles
  • Welcome

The Latest

  • Preparing Students for a "Post-Work" Economy
    What happens when we, as a species, "win" work? One of the […]

More

Thanks for dropping by! Feel free to hang out with us on Facebook, join the forum discussions , and stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed.
© 2012-2017 The Burning Mind Project
The Burning Mind Project