Showing 250 articles
Qawwali: Call of the Spirit
Author: Harianto MehtaOctober 9, 2022
This article serves only as an introduction to the legendary origins, metaphysical purpose, and the traditional form used in the practice of Qawwali. It would be impossible to capture the cultural nuances, complex history, and social impact of the genre in this brief work, but I hope to share some principal themes that have emerged [...]
Rethinking Contemporary Art in the Anthropocene – Planetary Aesthetics
Author: Siobhan FarrarJuly 6, 2022
‘Anthropocene’ is the term given to our post-industrial epoch, whereby human activity has irrevocably altered the planet and its environment. The ascent of the anthropocene poses challenges across all areas of life, leading to species loss and looming existential crisis for humanity. For artists, being less tangibly involved in solutions compared to other sciences, it [...]
The Fate of Empires
Author: Gilad SommerJuly 4, 2022
In 1976, at the age of 79, after a lifetime of service in the British army where he held high commands and fraternized with presidents and kings, Lieutenant General John Bagot Glubb, a.k.a Glubb Pasha, wrote a short but penetrating essay about the life cycle of superpowers called “The Fate of Empires”. In this small [...]
Gitanjali by Tagore: An Investigation
Author: Prof. Ananda LalJune 27, 2022
On 29th March 2021, The New Acropolis Culture Circle conducted an online session on Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning work Gitanjali, with Prof. Ananda Lal. An authority on Tagore, he retired as Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and directs Writers Workshop, the oldest continuing publisher of Indian poetry in English. The professor’s doctoral thesis had [...]
The Role of Shakespearean Tragedies in Society
Author: Akanksha SanghiJune 27, 2022
Today, we often think of theatre as merely a form of “entertainment” or “fiction”, yet in many ancient traditions such as Greek, Indian, and Egyptian, theatre played a very important role in society. It was considered to be educational, even mystical, with the aim of allowing people to connect to some invisible, intangible principles of [...]
Crime – Can we Do Something about it?
Author: Gilad SommerJune 6, 2022
There is a plague that is wreaking havoc in our cities these days, causing distress, pain, and fear. I’m not talking about COVID, but about the pestilence of crime. In the United States it has been a political issue for big city mayors for many decades, much thought and money has been thrown at the [...]
The Gurukul Tradition of Ancient India
Author: Manjula NanavatiMay 25, 2022
Indian philosophy holds that the universe is not confined to what is apparent to our sense perceptions, and that the Ultimate Reality is veiled from us, by a curtain that maroons us in ignorance and illusion. Accordingly, the main purpose of education in ancient India was to pierce this curtain in order to experience the [...]
Philosophy of Education
Author: Julian ScottMay 25, 2022
Napoleon once declared, “Of all political questions, education is perhaps the most important.” Undoubtedly, education is important from a political perspective because it has a major effect on the development of the citizen. But what about its value for the individual? Perhaps both of these facets are equally important and, as Aristotle pointed out, ethics [...]
Integral Education
Author: Istvan OrbanMay 25, 2022
Integral education is a popular term covering educational systems that focus not only on cognitive skills, but also on physical, vital, spiritual and psychological abilities. The idea of integral education is to provide a complex structure that can help to develop all aspects and all levels of the human being. Students who learn in this [...]
Genius of the Northern Renaissance – Albrecht Dürer
Author: Tim LeahyMay 25, 2022
If you were asked to name an artist of the Renaissance who was a superb painter, draughtsman, and skilled in science and mathematics, you would most likely think of Leonardo da Vinci. But there were others, and foremost among them was a German artist named Albrecht Dürer. Dürer was the leading artist of what is [...]
The Negative Impact of Technology on Education
Author: Florimond KrinsMay 16, 2022
In this article I would like to share with you an interesting paper entitled “Four Ways Technology Has Negatively Changed Education”, by Dr Khadija Alhumaid. In it she describes the extent to which technology has gradually been integrated into our education processes and methodology. Technology is not something new and specific to our industrial civilisation, [...]
Education and Art
Author: Sabine LeitnerApril 30, 2022
There are many studies that show that involvement in the arts can lead to increased academic performance. Dance, drama, music, and the visual arts in the school curriculum enable children to develop self-confidence and self-understanding, problem solving skills, perseverance and discipline, focus and concentration, creativity, self-directed learning, collaboration and many others – these are [...]