If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.

Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.

Maximum difficulty isn't the same as optimal difficulty.

Non-cooperative approaches, by contrast, almost always involve duplication of effort, since someone working independently must spend time and skills on problems that already have been encountered and overcome by someone else. A technical hitch, for example, is more likely to be solved quickly and imaginatively if scientists (including scientists from different countries) pool their talents rather than compete against one another.

If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.

If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept--and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff.

Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.