Springing the inner outlier « Gardner Writes

o of course I decided on something a bit over-ambitious and assigned a long, rambling, urgent, personal, repetitive, provocative book called The Black Swan.

Highlighted by generoche

Assuming there is something desirable in being an average man, he must have an unspecified specialty in which he would be more gifted than other people–he cannot be average in everything.A pianist would be better on average at playing the piano, but worse than the norm at, say, horseback riding. A draftsman would have better drafting skills, and so on. The notion of  a man deemed average is different from that of a man who is average in everything he does…. Quetelet completely missed that point. (242)

Highlighted by generoche

What if education, inescapably difficult and dispiriting in the parts that don’t come naturally, had as its clear and beckoning aim the hard work of setting up empowering contexts for each person’s excellence to attain its true force and maturity?

Highlighted by generoche