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Category: Readers' Opinions

Light the lamp

May 08

7:24 AM

While I applaud the efforts of Professor Steven Aird and his colleagues ('NSU professor loses job in dispute over grades,' May 4), they must face the facts. Education has changed dramatically in the last decade alone. Students today are different.

Our institutions must adapt or risk extinction. Now, more than ever before, professors must be teachers, not merely judges.

'Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,' said the poet William Butler Yeats. Schools need to be in the business of lighting more fires in the minds of the students.

That is the true issue at stake, not the dumbing-down of academic standards or what education used to be years ago.

Dr. Bruce C. Swaffield

Virginia Beach

View 2 comment(s) Link to post

"Students today are different."

Submitted by jpjones on Sun, 05/11/2008 at 10:15 am.

Perhaps. But is geometry any different? Is biology or chemistry any different? There are still correct and incorrect answers to questions in science, mathematics, medicine, and so forth. Should a medical student be passed if he/she cannot correctly answer questions about the human anatomy? Would you want your surgeon operating on you if you knew he/she was "passed" in medical school because of pressure by the school administration to reduce failure rates?

The road less traveled.......

Submitted by Watch.Dog on Sun, 05/11/2008 at 8:02 am.

Looking back I see that this is the truth, "Schools need to be in the business of lighting more fires in the minds of the students." That has been the difference between me and many of my peers since before high school. The pail has been filled to overfilling many times but the fire is never quenched. To be sure, sometimes the fire is out of control for awhile, but as we have learned from prehistoric times: It is better to have fire than not.