In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous A.P. courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey SUVs, but one doesn't have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain.

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.

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

How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.

If a child is off-task...mayb e the problem is not the child...maybe it's the task.

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

Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.