In educational matters, as any old hand at curricular debate can attest, the best is frequently made an enemy of the good. And, all too often, it is an ideal and theoretical "best" held up to expose the shabbiness and shortcomings of a known and practical "good." Today as we struggle with the gritty and intractable realities of our own era, we are once again bludgeoned by fashionable memories of an idealized and romanticized past. Let us be sure it is not a past that never truly was. Let us be sure, too, that what is being measured against it is a present that really is.
-Francis Oakley. Community of Learning: The American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition. (72)
No comments:
Post a Comment