In the United States, if you ask teachers, "Are there children whom we should call 'gifted?'", many if not most will say 'No.' That's the politically correct answer. But if you then ask the teacher to rank order students in terms of how well they paint or write or dance, they'll have little difficulty in doing so.

The Goal of Education is to Help People Use Their Minds Better

I want to understand how best to create and preserve a form of higher education that we value but that is in jeopardy for many reasons.

I am relieved that, in my own teaching, I don't have to moderate between high stake teaching and education for the virtues. If I did, I would give students the tools to take the tests but not spend an inordinate amount of time on test prep nor on 'teaching to the test.' If the students, or their parents, want drill in testing, they'd have to go elsewhere. As a professional, my most important obligation is to teach the topic, skills, and methods in ways that I feel are intellectually legitimate.

Hitler didn't travel. Stalin didn't travel. Saddam Hussein never traveled. They didn't want to have their orthodoxy challenged.

It's not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart.

The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all students as if they were variants of the same individual and thus to feel justified in teaching them all the same subjects the same way.