William A. Henry III Quotes
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Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery.
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In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian.
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The very essence of school is elitism. Schools exist to teach, to test, to rank hierarchically to promote the idea that knowing and understanding more is better than knowing and understanding less.
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Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.
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In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success.
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Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability.
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A poet laureate of adolescent sexuality and middle-age longing.
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The dominant mood of contemporary American culture is the self-celebration of the peasantry.
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It is a commonplace observation that liberals believe in the perfectibility of man while conservatives believe in the endurance of original sin. Superficially, that would suggest that conservatives take a more understanding and indulgent view of individual lapses, while liberals take a more harshly judgmental one. In fact, we know, quite the opposite is the case.
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No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time.