students

Your kid may be an honors student, but you're still an idiot.

The wonderful thing about garden-based learning is that it's a hands-on, minds-on experience where my students and I learn together.

The world is run by "C" students.

"Dear Mom and Dad," a young college student wrote, "I haven't heard from you for a long time. Please send a check so that I will know that you're all right."

Some of the men stood talking in this room, and at the right of the door a little knot had formed round a small table, the center of which was the mathematics student, who ws eagerly talking. He had made the assertion that one could draw through a given point more than one parallel to a straight line; Frau Hagenström had cried out that this was impossible, and he had gone on to prove it so conclusively that his hearers were constrained to behave as though they understood.

There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a scholar should not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used to have great stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to write down ideas while reading "curious George" to a two-year-old. On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate school for his first job, his thesis advisor told him, "You may wonder how a professor gets any research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview prospective faculty. Well, I take long showers."

Tony is one of the most courageous people I've ever met. Describing his student, Tony Brown, wrestling competitively at 105 lbs, a year after having both legs amputated following an accident.

The inner teachings must be transmitted orally and personally from teacher to student before they can be understood from the heart.

Education Many believe our entire public-education establishment is going in exactly the wrong direction. Rather, having a goal of real achievement, the trend seems to be toward reaching some kind of educational parity, to make sure no students feel badly about themselves. The liberal educational theoreticians tell you that bad grades only serve to discourage underachievers. The primary objective of Outcome-Based Education is to avoid humiliating a student. We should be educating the student first. Students are passing courses and graduating because of lower requirements, because of this new philosophical belief that no one should be held back. Colleges and universities are finding out that a high-school diploma is meaningless in terms of real achievement. The liberal school establishment lowers standards, ignores human nature, refuses to reward success and doesn't punish failure.

"Even though it will disappoint many of you, the evidence is that you have a very bright future." This is how I finished my presentation at American University, eliciting a few chuckles from the audience. On a more serious note, I asked the students to consider a radical proposition: Economic growth and technological progress are not enemies of the environment but are perhaps its best friends, since they allow us to reduce humanity's footprint on the natural world. High tech agriculture boosts farm productivity, which means a cheaper food supply and more land spared for nature. Better sewage treatment means that our rivers and streams can run freer of pollutants. Catalytic converters on cars and better filters on power-plant smokestacks have greatly reduced smog, smoke and soot in the air. But only rich societies can afford to pay for these. In the end, the best environmental program of all is the promotion of prosperity.