By Nature, I Am Not

We Should Spend Less Time Ranking Children And More Time Helping Them To Identify Their Natural Competencies And Gifts And Cultivate These. There Are Hundreds And Hundreds Of Ways To Succeed And Many, Many Different Abilities That Will Help You Get There.

If Confucius Can Serve As The Patron Saint Of Chinese Education, Let Me Propose Socrates As His Equivalent In A Western Educational Context - A Socrates Who Is Never Content With The Initial Superficial Response, But Is Always Probing For Finer Distinctions, Clearer Examples, A More Profound Form Of Knowing. Our Concept Of Knowledge Has Changed Since Classical Times, But Socrates Has Provided Us With A Timeless Educational Goal - Ever Deeper Understanding.

Creativity Begins With An Affinity For Something. It's Like Falling In Love.

The Wonderful Thing About The Theater Is That It Can Emphasize Both Our Diversity And Our Common Humanity. In Many Ways, The World Of Shakespeare (or Aeschylus Or Racine) Is Totally Different From Our World; And Yet Any Human Being Can Look Through The Differences In Dress And Mores And Discover Our Common Problems, Passions, And Potentials.

Best Of All, Persons Can Sometimes Be App-transcendent: Making Dramatic Progress Or Discoveries, Without Any Dependence On Any App. In This Context, I Like To Mention Steve Jobs. While He Had As Much To Do As Anyone With The Invention And Development Of Apps, He Never Was Limited By The Current Technology - Indeed, He Typically Transcended It And Relied On His Own Considerable Wits.