Um dos artigos definidores do nosso tempo por David Brooks
The young men and women of America’s future elite work their laptops to the bone, rarely question authority, and happily accept their positions at the top of the heap as part of the natural order of life
Não conseguindo encontrar uma versão integral em site publoico (A introdução pode ser consultada aqui) fica um link para a versão no Proquest
Este artigo foca as consequências de:
Perhaps the most important event in ushering in the big-backpack era was the release of the report fl Nation at Risk, on April 26, 1983. Commissioned by Terrel Bell, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, the report decried the “rising tide of mediocrity” plaguing American schools and it caused an immediate sensation. The problem, it said, was that schools had become too loose and freeflowing. Students faced a “cafeteria style curriculum” that gave them too many choices. They were graduating from high school having spent much of their time in elective gut classes. They didn’t do enough homework, They weren’t. given enough “rigorous examinations” and standardized tests, nor were they forced to meet stringent college-admissions requirements.
The report represented a rejection of an era that celebrated “natural” education, student-centered diversity, and spontaneity, and that cultivated creativity over discipline and nonconformity over conformity. A Nation at Risk bid farewell to all that, and said it was time to reassert authority and re-establish order. Schools needed to get back to basics.
Na geração de caloiros admitida a Princeton de 2001.
O mais aterrador para mim no entanto é a descoberta através deste artigo do “Ritalin”:
Far from all of that Ritalin goes to elementary school kids, but the Ritalin that does is prescribed most frequently in upper-middle-class suburban districts-where, one suspects, the achievement ethos is strongest. Some physicians believe that 10 percent of all children have the sort of conduct disorder-attention-deficit disorder, oppositional defiant disorder-that could be eased with Ritalin or some other drug. It is stunning how quickly we have moved from the idea that children should be given freedom to chart their own learning to a belief that adults have a responsibility to reshape the minds of kids whose behavior deviates from the standard
