Questions pertaining to the desirability of noise in the classroom immediately come to mind here. The question of whether the subdued classroom is truly the optimal learning atmosphere is pretty unavoidable. And that being the case, it probably shouldn't be much of a surprise that I've linked to this same article in my Hebrew blog that deals with educational issues. Pretty much by definition schools filter noise, they create synthetic environments that, rather than imitating "the outside world", channel, or control, those parts of it that are considered conducive to learning. It's obviously an issue that bridges both my educational and more generally social interests.

And although there's certainly nothing surprising about my relating to this particular article in both of these online frameworks, doing so raises a different issue. I've tended to keep my general and amorphous musings (those dealt with in the Boidem) and my more clearly educationally directed pronouncements more or less separate. But this separation might be considered, in and of itself, Boidem type material. A year and a half ago I first attempted to compare, or perhaps contrast, these two frameworks, but since then I've let them develop independently, letting them intersect if they so wish, but not forcing them to do so. As time passes, however, both of these frameworks have undergone change, and I've become aware that rather than remaining independent of each other, they've grown closer, in terms of both content and style. And this in itself is an issue that merits further examination in the not too distant future.