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Lori Gottlieb, writing in The Atlantic last year, claimed that child-rearing in the current generation has been excessively focused on preserving self-esteem.  As an illustration of one symptom of this, Gottlieb quoted clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel as saying that parents are actually relieved to be told that their struggling children are learning disabled, so that today "every child is either learning disabled, gifted, or both – there's no curve left, no average."  To claim a learning disability is the only way to set legitimate lower benchmarks for performance.  Kids are never just bad at anything anymore, because that's seen as being more harmful to self-esteem.

But my worries about the individual effects of the death of aptitude are dwarfed by my concern for its effect on the institutions of higher learning that those individuals are entering.  College is not a one-directional relationship of dispensing knowledge to young people.  The entire institution gains or loses value on the basis of what its students put into it.  By telling students with low aptitude and low interest that they can, should, and must strive to accomplish the same things as their higher-achieving peers, I fear that we're saturating higher education with people who subtract value from their institutions by committing minimum effort and lowering whatever curve still exists for the measurement of performance.

We all seem to agree that standards for college readiness need to improve, but you'll hear virtually no one asserting that when those standards are not met, the student ought to leave off college altogether, or to defer it until they have acquired, by sheer will or by natural intellectual growth, the aptitude to be successful at the proper level.  Indeed, just as common in criticism of education is the sentiment that we must see to it that more children enter and complete college.  But if those children don't have the aptitude to do so, the goal of improving college curriculum contradicts the goal of college-for-all.

We can't keep pretending that there is no such thing as aptitude and that every child has equal cause to vie for the topmost positions of intellectual esteem.  It does a disservice to the student and the school in kind.

But the teaching of reading veered significantly off track when those personal connections (also well represented on some high-stakes state assessments) began to dominate the teaching and testing of comprehension, often leaving the text itself a distant memory.

the shift to teaching reading as a set of thinking strategies too often left readers with the notion that the text was simply a launching point for their musings, images that popped into their heads, and random questions that, in the end, did little to enhance their understanding of the text itself.

examining meaning thoroughly and analytically

directing attention to the text, central ideas, and supporting details

reflecting on meanings of individual words and sentences

developing ideas over the course of the text

The best thinkers do monitor and assess their thinking, but in the context of processing the thinking of others (Paul & Elder, 2008)

They could always get rid of their outdated toys on eBay.

Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger.

Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid.

Jurassic Park has always had rides and snack bars, not free-range triceratops and velociraptors.

With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address.

As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work.

Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated.

They have never really needed to go to their friend’s house so they could study together.

They have always been able to plug into USB ports

Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing.

Uncertainty is an inherent part of new ideas, and it’s also something that most people would do almost anything to avoid. People’s partiality toward certainty biases them against creative ideas and can interfere with their ability to even recognize creative ideas.

Unfortunately, the place where our first creative ideas go to die is the place that should be most open to them—school. Studies show that teachers overwhelmingly discriminate against creative students, favoring their satisfier classmates who more readily follow directions and do what they’re told.

It’s ironic that even as children are taught the accomplishments of the world’s most innovative minds, their own creativity is being squelched.

All of this negativity isn’t easy to digest, and social rejection can be painful in some of the same ways physical pain hurts. But there is a glimmer of hope in all of this rejection. A Cornell study makes the case that social rejection is not actually bad for the creative process—and can even facilitate it.

Truly creative ideas take a very long time to be accepted. The better the idea, the longer it might take.

Most people agree that what distinguishes those who become famously creative is their resilience. While creativity at times is very rewarding, it is not about happiness. Staw says a successful creative person is someone “who can survive conformity pressures and be impervious to social pressure.”

To live creatively is a choice.

You have to let go of satisfying people, often even yourself.

moving away from a one-size-fits-all system, in which students largely follow the same calendar and curriculum on their way to collecting 120 credits for a bachelor's degree

More of the decisions colleges make about their direction must be rooted in data.

Now the data exist to track students, the classes they took, how they performed, and their outcomes after graduation—all of which can inform decisions.

give state regulators a new option to either act as accreditors or create their own accreditation systems.

“States could accredit online courses, or hybrid models with elements on- and off-campus.”

regional accreditors are doing a fairly good job. They are under enormous pressure to keep “bad actors” at bay while also encouraging experimentation. And he said accreditors usually get it right.

Andrew Kelly, however, likes Lee’s idea. Kelly, who is director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Higher Education Reform, said it would create a credible alternative to the existing accreditation system, which the bill would leave intact.

eliminating bureaucracy in higher education regulation is a top priority

“Accreditation could also be available to specialized programs, individual courses, apprenticeships, professional credentialing and even competency-based tests,”

broad, bipartisan agreement that federal aid policies have not kept pace with new approaches to higher education.

expansion of competency-based education. And he said the federal rules governing financial aid make it hard for colleges to go big with those programs.

accreditors is that they favor the status quo, in part because they are membership organizations of academics that essentially practice self-regulation.

changes to the existing accreditation system that might make it easier for competency-based and other emerging forms of online education to spread.

offering competency-based degrees through a process called direct assessment, which is completely de-coupled from the credit-hour standard.

Simply handing a teacher an iPad in advance won’t serve to address these challenges when the school year starts

Teachers need instruction on how to incorporate the devices into the learning process, which is quite different than trying out a few apps

School administrators should be explaining to their constituents that the iPad supports essential skill areas — complex communication, new media literacy, creativity, and self-directed learning. Instead of focusing on the convenience of ebooks, they should instead be emphasizing the incredibly immersive and active learning environment the iPad engenders and the unprecedented opportunities to develop personalized, student-centered learning. They should highlight some of the beneficial consumption, curation, and creativity activities the iPad facilitates — as well as the student empowerment it inspires.

"A lot of people have done a lot more and gotten a lot less, and a lot of people have done a lot less and gotten a lot more."

I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts, but also, in part, because the kids liked me and they spent time writing better eyewitness accounts than they would have written if they hadn't liked me

The only people who will ever know the value of the ribbons on their chests are the people wearing them—and even they can fool themselves, in both directions.

he whole assault ground to a halt, except for one kid named Niemi, who had sprinted forward when we came under the intense fire and disappeared up in front of us somewhere.

alking to a group of us about when it was a platoon leader earned his pay. I knew, floating above that mess, that now that time had come. If I didn't get up and lead, we'd get wiped.

I'm most proud of is that I simply stood up, in the middle of all that flying metal, and started up the hill all by myself.

I did it for the right reasons.

At this point I saw the missing kid, Niemi, pop his head up. He sprinted across the open top of the hill, all alone.

Crashing out of the clouds into this confusion came a flaming, smoking twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter.

I saw Niemi pop into sight again. He sprinted to the downed chopper.

the only thing he could think to do was sprint across the open hilltop to see if he could find a place from which he could lay down fire to protect them.

Niemi got a Navy Cross.

I got a Navy Cross.

elicopter pilot

ont-page story

The kid who borrowed my rifle didn't get anyt

hing.

It was just about that time I got knocked out and blinded by a hand grenade. I came to, groggy.

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