"We tend to think, now, of the ideal family as a little hatchery for future contributors to the Social Security system, non-criminals who will enhance national productivity while lowering the cost per capita of preventable illness. We have forgotten that old American nonsense about alabaster cities, about building the stately mansions of the soul. We have lowered our hopes abysmally, for no reason obvious to me, without a murmur I have ever heard. To fulfill or fall short of such minor aspirations as we have now is the selfsame misery."
--Marilynne Robinson on "Family," in The Death of Adam.
Robinson attributes that lowering of hopes to "a new upsurge of that famous Western rationalism, old enemy of reasonableness, always so right at the time, always so shocking in retrospect." When the time finally comes to put test-driven education -- and all its accompanying "
programs" -- to rest, I can't think of a better epitaph.
..How can I comment?
