Talk:School of Practical Philosophy

Tone, Impartiality
Anyone else think this article's tone is a little "off" - it seems more like an ad for the school itself: "The course is designed for thoughtful men and women who seek an understanding of the nature of humanity and of the world in which we live." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.90.232.64 (talk) 03:37, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Deleted personal comments
I would have been happy to see the following material here on the discussion page, but it doesn't seem appropriate as a part of the article itself. It also appears to have been someone's first contribution to wikipedia. Franzeska 14:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

''The perspective spelled out in the attached link/website located under the Criticisms category above is pretty accurate as compared to my own personal experience with the school. I attended their introductory course and while I did learn much, and enjoyed my time there, at the same time, I had this very strong underlying sense that the school was not being completely forthright with the students, and that there was an underlying, ulterior agenda, that they did not want to make readily apparent to us. The 2-hour or so evening classes included a 30-minute meal break, which I always found rather odd. (After a long day of work, wouldn't most people just rather get the 2-hour class over with so they can head back home? Why add a 30-minute break to it?)  During the 30-minute break, the students were expected to go down to a cafeteria of sorts, where a buffet-style meal was available for a nominal fee. It seemed that every time we went to the cafeteria, there seemed to be non-students (or "members" of the school it seemed, wearing either suits and ties or long flowy dresses) already randomly seated at various tables, as if they were "awaiting" us. They would always start very innocent-seeming, casual conversation with the students, but would never come out and identify themselves as being affiliated with the school. (I think they hoped we'd just assume they were students just like ourselves.) I believe that they were trying to "feel out" the different students, to see who might be most receptive to perhaps further "training" by the school.''

I still believe that one can learn much from attending their classes, but I also feel you need to go their with your eyes "wide open".

Earlier deleted material
At some point the following was deleted:

Several articles appear on the Ross Institute's website. The Ross Institute is a watchdog for cults operating worldwide. The progression of study is as follows for the first five years:

1st Year - Lessons on Hindu inspired philosophy, with any probing questioning suppressed. Guided meditation / hypnosis

2nd Year - Students given mantra. Guided mediation / hypnosis. Initiation Hindu ceremony including symbolic donation of one weeks wages in which one pledges one's allegiance to the picture of Shankaracharya.

3rd & 4th Years - Increasing amounts of time taken by the group, including spending weekends cleaning the group premises.

5th Year - Specific courses for women emphasizing their subservience to men. They are told how long they should breast feed their offspring for and how frequently they can enjoy sexual relations. If they follow these instructions they are told that for their re-incarnation they will be men. According to the witness this clearly shows the desire of the organisation (sect) to dominate the adepts & their lives. The work entitled 'Secret Cult' contains testimonies from people who were deceived by the movement in England. The school espouses traditional gender roles and this is immediately apparent by the dress code within the school. The men all wear suits and the women wear long flowing skirts. Former members have claimed that the 'School' practices subtle brainwashing techniques to ensure absolute obedience. Its disciples put in many hours of unpaid work each week looking after the movement's large property and holdings, and taking part in group activities. They are encouraged to isolate themselves from influences outside the movement, they are discouraged from discussing the School's activities with non-members, and if they leave the movement they become pariahs to those that remain. The demands placed on members are so strong, it is claimed, that marriages fail, families split up, and some students develop serious mental problems.

It is not cited and should not be in the article as it stands. However, cited information on the subject would be most helpful.Sylvain1972 (talk) 17:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Nominate reinstating a separate article from the School of Economic Science
The School of Practical Philosophy is a Section 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York. Its tax ID number is 13-3107679. Legally, it is a separate organization from SES. The NYT article from January 2010 is a sufficient source to qualify the school for its own article; as Dream Focus said in the discussion on Articles_for_deletion/School_of_Practical_Philosophy. I believe it was merged in error and should have its own article. Christieag (talk) 18:19, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I totally support the above proposal now that this new evidence has been made available. The result of merging the SofPP and SoES pages is a muddle. Separation is the easiest way of tidying it up. The organisations may share common aims, but appear to be legally and effectively distinct.wikirpg (talk) 15:14, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with this revelation. :) Silver  seren C 16:47, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion
Per the discussion here, where I proposed the splitting of the School of Practical Philosophy from the School of Economic Science, the other editors agreed that it should be split off and there was no outstanding opposition to the action. The main reason put forth in the AfD was that there were not enough references that covered the subject. I have fixed that by adding in a number of new references that makes the current article far different from what it was before. Thus, I have addressed the main reason for deletion in the AfD and I believe this to be a valid article now. Silver seren C 13:39, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Article status
I'm still not happy with this article being a separate article from the School of Economic Science. Again, I respect that these new references were gathered in good faith, but the fact remains that the vast majority of them are *trivial*. They happen to mention the School of Practical Philosophy in passing. By this standard, we can easily have articles on the First Presbyterian Church of Bakersfield, which got a newspaper article written about a break-in nearby in 1993 and had a travelogue writer mention passing by in 2002. Going through the refs:


 * A whole bunch are to the website's organization itself (including the New York State certification, which means absolutely nothing). Fine for establishing their self-identified beliefs, not fine for establishing independent notability.
 * Manhattan family guide to schools is a beyond trivial ref that should be removed.
 * The Alan Gregory ref, while from an apparently serious work, also sounds like a trivial mention in passing. It was listed on a random example list.  It doesn't sound like much in-depth work was done by Gregory on the school itself if the listed quote is all it says.
 * The blaze article is irrelevant and spends no time at all talking about the SPP. So the School owns a mansion in upstate NY.  Do they still do so?  Is it used for anything?
 * The Times Herald-Record and NYTimes Blog post on the SPP were covered in the previous AfD - they're legit, but very very minor. Not much to work with from them.
 * I don't have access to the LATimes article, but looks like it's just being used to affirm the subway bit, which actually is notable.
 * Hugh Jackman was covered at the AfD too, amusing factoid and fine to include in the article, but doesn't really prove independent notability.
 * "The A to Z of new religious movements" is actually the best source in the article. It is exactly the kind of source that is independent and covers the SPP for what matters - its teachings/beliefs, rather than its real estate.  And how does it cover it?  It is mentioned as a sub-branch of the School of Economic Science, with all its previous comments about the SES presuming to apply.

So yeah. I'm still in favor of merging all this material back to the SES article. Thoughts? SnowFire (talk) 02:18, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I still find the rational for merging these articles unclear as the organisations are financially and legally distinct (ref UK Charity Commission). I would agree with merging if it could be shown that they were merely branches of the same organisation, which the mention of the First Presbyterian Church of Bakersfield seems to be illustrating. wikirpg (talk) 09:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I just double-checked the references in this article and the SES article - I don't see the UK Charity Commission reference you're referring to?


 * That said, I doubt it's relevant. Legally distinct is not very interesting from an encyclopedic perspective - plenty of related entities end up legally distinct for all sorts of reasons.  For example, there are many legally independent churches that are related to a certain creed of Christianity nonetheless (as well as independent explicitly non-denominational Christians, which, perversely, all fall into the group of non-denominational churches), or non-notable independent businesses that all service a notable specific business type.  These don't generally get articles or mention at all in the main article, of course.  SPP is more notable than that, but I'm unconvinced that it's enough to stand on its own.  To put things another way, there are two notable things about SPP: its curriculum / beliefs, and its advertising in NYC.   The former is barely covered in this article at all (but the "A to Z of new religious movements" reference suggests that most of the SES article should be relevant) and the latter can easily be included in the merged section in the SES article. SnowFire (talk) 17:23, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Recreation of redirect
You had only one response in the discussion you opened, SnowFire. Wikirpg said s/he would only agree to merging if you proved that the two organizations were financially and legally linked, which you did not. Because they are not linked as such, they should most definitely not be in the same article together, when they have no relation. A consensus of only yourself is not a consensus. Please have other editors weigh in before you redirect this again. And I disagree with you about the references. I feel like they are more than enough coverage for a distinct article. Silver seren C 04:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm fine if you object, but please don't act like I'm the procedural bad guy here. The AfD closed as "merge" (not "just me") and there was no DRV and I waited months for a talk page response which never came.


 * That said: all the issues raised in the AfD stand. The article isn't that different at all from when it was AfD'd: I addressed the external links proffered as references then.   There is still only one good independent source on the School's beliefs/curriculum: The A to Z of New Religious Movements, which has all of one line.  And yes, according to our best source, the organizations are linked - SPP is mentioned soley as an "autonomous independent organization that teaches its philosophy" in the article on the School of Economic Science.  I did discuss this above.


 * And, as already noted above on the organization's distincness, I can't find any reference to the "UK Charity Commission" in the article, and I asked for clarification on this. So I don't see this source that proves your point.  I further noted that even if it does show that the SPP is a legally distinct entity, this is not really amazingly relevant anyway, and if that is all it does, then it adds nothing new - the original AfD was not predicated on a misunderstanding that the SPP and SES were legally the same thing. SnowFire (talk) 03:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No coverage? Then what do you call this and this? Silver  seren C 04:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

(de-indent) As already noted in the AfD, those were covered already and are not new information. I'll quote myself:
 * "...The Record Online article is on point, but also super-short and seems like a filler piece.


 * Now, the one source that is relevant is the New York Times piece (which only came out 2 months ago which is why I missed it in 2008!). However, this was not a piece of reporting - this was the "City Critic" doing more a slice-of-life piece on something she personally did, the newspaper equivalent of a blog post. It's still a good source, but I'm not sure I'd want to pin the entire third-party notice of a topic on just this one article. And more to the point, I don't see why the School of Practical Philosophy can't be covered adequately in the School of Economic Science parent article. I think any content sourced to the NYT piece can surely be put into the SES article instead; a stand-alone SPP article would have perhaps 3 paragraphs, so no reason not to merge. SnowFire (talk) 17:12, 27 March 2010 (UTC)"

In other words, The New York Times article attests to the SPP being known for its subway advertising. Which is relevant! But it says very little about the organization's beliefs / practices, and it's the newspaper equivalent of a blog post - one person's personal experience, not a piece of reporting. There are all sorts of human interest stories in newspaper articles everywhere that do not get Wikipedia articles. The best source we have is still "The A to Z of New Religious Movements" which is at least a reference work and RS, even if it's super-brief on the SPP, and according to it it's an autonomous branch of the SES.

To be procedural for a moment, you raised these sources before, and afterward there were 2 Delete votes, 1 Merge vote, 1 Weak Keep vote that seemed to indicate confusion on how much of a "school" the SPP really is, and 1 Keep vote. The original AfD nominator as well as me stuck by our merge / delete guns after seeing these sources. If you want time to improve the article, that's fine, but the original contention for removing the redirect was that good new sources were added. Which they really haven't been. As it stands, this article has the same strength of sourcing as the original AfD. SnowFire (talk) 20:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I hope the following helps. An external link to the relevant UK Charity Commission entry had been posted on the SES page (not being relevant to SoPP). This clearly states that SES operates in England and Scotland. Digging deeper into their annual report for 2010, links with associated schools overseas do not appear to be formal. Page 8: "The School has assisted the establishment and development of associated Schools with similar objects". This is very different to how the UK branches are described in that same report, the branches being obviously part of a coherent UK organisation. There is another significant published reference (I have just added to SoPP page), the book "In Search of Truth" ISBN 978-0-85683-276-5. This is about SES but does refer to similar schools around the world being set up by former students. The founding of the NY School is described on p224-5 and other schools in the US follow. P219 refers to several schools of this kind around the world "opening as independent institutions" and again on same page "there is no constitutional link between the international schools and London". I really do not favour a merge as has been said before.80.176.72.220 (talk) 22:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC) This posting was by me, but in error had not signed in at the time! wikirpg (talk) 08:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So... was that post from User:Silver seren?  I still don't see that as having much relevance, since as noted already the fact that it's an independent institution isn't really in doubt.  As a reminder, a merge still means that people will see basically the same info, just on the SES page.  If you really feel that this page should stay, I can open AfD round 2 rather than redirecting again. SnowFire (talk) 02:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed that the same information could be shown after a merge. The problem seen here is that the SES page would no longer be about SES. The (merged) page would have to be restructured to address a new topic on the lines of "The SES movement and similar organisations". The previous merge attempted solving the issue of having a page SSoP with little to say for itself; however it significantly upset the balance of the SES page. SSoP seems to be better now; new sources have been added, the original contention; I just do not see the merit of a re-merge. wikirpg (talk) 08:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I have just added this new, reliable source to the article (it struck me as odd that it hadn't been included) and noticed the following line: According to the official spokesperson for the New York chapter, Dr. Monica Vecchio–an adjunct professor of English at Baruch who has been involved with group since 1967–S.E.S. and the School of Practical Philosophy are “the same thing with different names. There are 70 or 80 [branches] around the world. Each share the same course curriculum, with the same content. The principles are the same, the practices are the same, the stream of discussion is the same.” Based on this new information, I support the case for a merge of the two articles. The legal distinction between the two organizations is as irrelevant as, say, Halliburton Co. and Halliburton Company Germany GmbH. It's standard (and often a necessity) that international organizations open separate legal entities in separate national jurisdictions and give them different names; moreover we've got a named senior representative saying they are all the same thing. -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:21, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, a question to User:Wikirpg... please could you explain for me the sentence on your Talk page 'This user is an open source' ? I would like to understand what that means as we go forward. Thanks in advance, -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:38, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Not much to say other than I still agree with my earlier statements that this article should be merged to the SES article, and Roberthall's source even further confirms this. To be clear, *no content will be lost*, just this should be treated as a subtopic of SES with all the content on this merged there. SnowFire (talk) 18:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, SnowFire. There's another source here from the organization's own website, listing all its different names in one place. They should all be mentioned in the merged article. -Roberthall7 (talk) 08:32, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * And here's a third source saying that despite being legally distinct, all the branches have one leader, Donald Lambie. -Roberthall7 (talk) 10:06, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fourth source, refers to SoPP as a "branch" of SES. -Roberthall7 (talk) 17:22, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we've waited long enough. Go ahead and redirect the article, saving the content that isn't a duplicate and is still relevant by moving it to the SES article. SnowFire (talk) 22:01, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. -Roberthall7 (talk) 12:28, 11 January 2014 (UTC)