The weight of political interests and of special interest groups against such reform is enormous. I am concerned that the expectations and standards statewide are not high enough to enable students to keep their appointments with destiny as learners. And I am not sanguine about the extent to which the reform goals focus on what students are supposedly destined to be up against at some time in the twenty-first century, as predicted by futurists and pundits who are accountable to no one. There is less emphasis on who the students are becoming right now, and that seems to me a serious mistake. Think for a moment about being ready to take responsibility for one's own destiny.
Every day is an appointment with destiny, impossible to erase or to repeat.
Every smallest stroke . . Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. In addition they need training on group dynamics, team building and consensus building to work more effectively themselves, and to train students for the workplace of the twenty-first century. The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education borrowed this language from the reform literature in Massachusetts. I will not belabor this further except to say that much of the language of education reform in Massachusetts serves as powerfully to obscure what is needed to keep appointments with destiny as the clear language of William James does to bring it to light.