The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one rea...
A significant percentage of the millions of students who will graduate schools today are desperately searching for the one thing. But rather than help them discover the secrets that could launch them into a successful and fulfilling life, many univer...
The overemphasis on standardized tests forces teachers to teach the same restricted, unintuitive curriculum. Longtime educator Brent Evans has said that today's schools are organized as assembly lines, "(running at a set speed) and with each worker (...
I'm excited about going back to 'Today,' but, at odd moments, I'll grit my teeth in anxiety. I feel like a student before the start of school. I've got my new shoes and my book bag, but I'm not sure I'll remember how to do trigonometry. During my mat...
A few lessons learned as a teacher: I've learned that if you whisper, children will listen...a scribble can be anything (I mean anything!) a monster, a cat, a mom, a dad--our job is to ask to find out and pay attention--usually the most challenging s...
Ehimlite universities are strong at delivering their commercial mission. They are pretty strong in developing their cognitive mission. But when it comes to the sort of growth Deresiewicz is talking about, everyone is on their own. An admissions offic...
I mean, when I got to Brown, the place was riven, because you had older professors who were basically new critics and had been teaching a certain way for 30 years. And then you had this other gang who was down with the semiotic program. And as a stud...
Vince Walker: I met him once. Collins: You mean Gandhi? Vince Walker: Yeah, in South Africa, a long time ago. I wonder if he'll recognize me. Collins: What was he like? Vince Walker: He had a full head of hair then. We were a bit like college student...
Professor Severus Snape: [to the Hogwart's students] If anyone here knows any knowledge of Mr. Potter's movements this evening, I invite them to step forward... now. Harry Potter: [Stepping out of the crowd] It seems despite your exhaustive defensive...
[Harry and Luna are the last two students to arrive at the school] Professor Filius Flitwick: There you are! We've been looking everywhere for you two. [looks at his register] Professor Filius Flitwick: Now, names? Harry Potter: Professor Flitwick, y...
Georg Dreyman: The state office for statistics on Hans-Beimler street counts everything; knows everything: how many pairs of shoes I buy a year: 2.3, how many books I read a year: 3.2 and how many students graduate with perfect marks: 6,347. But ther...
Jason: What are you people doing here? We can't continue the story 'til Tom gets back. Harold: Oh, we don't mind observing you all. Harold's Wife: Yes. My husband is a student of the human personality. Rita: Oh yeah, well we're not human. Harold's Wi...
When I used to teach civil procedure as a law professor, I would begin the year by telling my students that 'civil procedure is the etiquette of ritualized battle.' The phrase, which did not originate with me, captured the point that peaceful, develo...
I picked ducks in a tub in my dorm room. I'd hang deer in the doorway between the bedroom and the little living room in our little apartment there, and I'd skin my deer, and all the guts would go in the tub, and I'd sneak them out so my fellow studen...
The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone...
The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their scepticism to UFOs, aspirin...
As students grow more and more accustomed to assuming materialism and naturalism in their academic work, the concept of creation by God gradually tends to become less real to them. It is not so much that any single finding undermines their faith; rat...
High School students in America debate why President Roosevelt didn't bomb the rail lines to Hitler's camps. Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps, and did nothing.
How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. Peopl...
In actual fact. The manifold sexualities - those which appear with the different ages (sexualities of the infant or the child), those which become fixated on particular tastes or practices (the sexuality of the invert, the gerontophile, the fetishist...
I get my first paycheck. We are paid once a month, which requires the kind of budgeting I am incapable of. Life is unpleasant after the twenty-third or so. I've been a graduate student for so long it's hard to fathom that one check can have four numb...
