The Unexamined Education

Jonathan Ali & Shaun Dalrymple•unexaminededucation.transistor.fm

Ever feel like the rhetoric of education doesn’t match the reality? Join two veteran teachers as they envision a more perfect system by interrogating the hidden assumptions that alienate love of learning in our schools.

Last refreshed: August 15th, 2025 at 11:33 AM ⓘ

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Episodes

The Rhetoric of Learning Loss

Shaun makes it almost seven whole minutes without entirely dismissing the premise of the discussion. Jon forces him into another 50 minutes of conversation anyway. Jon gives an anecdote that he claims is not proof, but after delivering his anecdote, both Jon and Shaun treat the anecdote as universal truths. Shaun is suspiciously vague about whether or not he can count. Jon points out that the reason why we don't see mental education as analogous to physical education is because mental education ...

Sep 25, 2020•58 min•Ep. 6

Movie Review: Stand and Deliver

Wow! These guys are going after Jaime Escalante now…not the actual person, but the character portrayed by Edward James Olmos in the great movie, Stand and Deliver. Of course, both of them used to like the movie but now find themselves critical of their former judgments due to their tendency to overthink absolutely everything. After a few minutes of chuckling about the cringe factor of the 80s, the two then analyze the movie as though it were a real classroom situation from the 80s. Some insights...

Sep 18, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 5

Mediating Between the Soul and Society

In this episode, we didn't just learn about teaching; we learned about life...well, sort of. Shaun realizes that he once was a clown. He seems to believe that he is no longer one. Jon fancied himself a hero and clearly has given up on that self image. The two discuss other personas and think about student responses to those personas. They analyze popular teaching styles in a way that is less than flattering, as though some styles are more about inflating teacher egos than educating students. The...

Sep 12, 2020•41 min•Ep. 4

An Apology for Society

These two tormented souls try to mount a proper case for society emphasizing certain essential schooling, but within minutes of the start of the show, they refer to society at large as tyrannical and spend the rest of the episode mounting the weakest defense imaginable for literacy, numeracy, and citizenship. Despite this failure, the listener finds himself strangely sympathetic to these two teachers' plights, and the episode becomes less about what Jon and Shaun are saying and more about living...

Sep 04, 2020•49 min•Ep. 3

How to Ruin Learning

Shaun asks Jon why he chose to study English in college and explains how he came to deeply appreciate his own choice to study "English." They both then point out how they ruined that study of literature for students by teaching literature. Jon shares why he performed so poorly in math classes in high school before pointing out that he could manage the subject when he had time to approach it on his own terms. A hopeful herpetologist student from early in Shaun's career carries the conversation fu...

Aug 31, 2020•34 min•Ep. 2

Shaun and Jon Introduce Themselves

Jon and Shaun tell the story of what their lives were like as students and how they got into teaching, and why both of them left teaching only to return some years later with a more mature eye on the profession. Jon and Shaun have been discussing the nature of education for years and would like to share their insights with a wider audience. Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / CC BY-SA

Aug 29, 2020•24 min•Ep. 1

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