Monday, December 01, 2003
Feeling good, knowing nothing
The newest edition of the Minnesota Scholar, the newsletter of the Minnesota Association of Scholars, contains several good stories, including Hugh Mercer Curtler's review of Maureen Stout's The Feel-Good Curriculum. Commenting on the self-esteem movement, Curtler notes:
I would ... paraphrase John Stuart Mill by saying that we do not know what is possible for our students to accomplish until we ask them to do the impossible. Surely, Stout is correct: We have sold our students short and they have delivered as promised. It is not the students� fault: We are at present lying in beds of our own making.
