The measure of our students' learning must be the understanding of the unfamiliar. Our students must learn to make principled use of the unforeseen. No two schools, no two teachers, no two schools, no two communities are ever precisely alike or even alike from one year to the next. Therefore we teachers need to know each of our students well and to work under conditions that make this knowing an easy reality. What makes us quintessentially human is our intellect.
Humans are uniquely reflective animals.
Schools are fundamentally about the intellect, about cajoling each young person into the habit of using his or her mind well. Teaching to this end is a demanding task, but we must persist at it. The young person who cannot think resourcefully for herself or himself, who is not in the habit of being informed and respectfully skeptical, is a crippled person, easy prey for those who would bend their minds for unworthy purposes.