How do we understand our gifts without the certificate, the diploma?   That's the challenge.  

And, sadly, much of our formal education is about standardizing exactly

that shift, in teaching that kindergarten child who believes she can do absolutely anything that, no, she's a poor reader, or bad in math, or a poor speller, or a poor artist or has no musical talent (as my husband was once told when he was a child: 

Still, it's become a popular fantasy that all you need is a superstar teacher, and that he or she will be just as effective even as budget cuts force us to pack more kids into each classroom.

we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

ere’s how it works. The instructor attaches a blank piece of paper to the back of every exam. Students may write on that sheet any exam questions they couldn’t answer or weren’t sure they answered correctly. Students then take this piece of paper with them and look up the correct answers. They can use any resource at their disposal short of asking the instructor. At the start of the next class session, they turn in their set of corrected answers which the instructor re-attaches to their original exam. Both sets of answers are graded. If students missed the question on the exam but answered it correctly on the attached sheet, half the credit lost for the wrong answer is recovered.

o culture is starved. Aesthetics are gone. Joy in learning is regarded as a bothersome distraction. "These kids don't have time for joy, or whim, or charm, or inquiry! Leave whim and happiness to the children of the privileged. Poor kids can't afford that luxury." Even good and idealistic inner-city principals tell me that they feel they have no choice.