Sublime

obligation to themselves.

What the student needed above all was the chance to learn to think for himself. So he ought to pursue the line of investigation that interested him most, just as, conversely, a professor ought to be perfectly free to devote his own efforts however he chose. One term, a course of twenty-one lectures was offered on sharks alone, a favorite topic of t

reject the premise of the American Dream, and instead define a new Black American reality of ownership, excellence, and communal obligation.

while everyone in the class liked him, we all felt sorry for him. He always seemed so lonely. We knew his wife had left him. We knew he lived in a small apartment and didn’t have much money. But we loved him; we spent a lot of time talking about what a great guy he was and what a shame it was that he was in that situation. “Can you see a thought pa

Five years: – if he could only be sure that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering himself – then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things, where talent brings fame, and

capitalizing on the spirit of sensibility and sensitivity that seemed to reside inherently in most of his students.

Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us?

Critical education theorist bell hooks, echoing Paulo Freire, calls this a “banking” model of education: we treat human learners as if they are safe-deposit boxes for knowledge and ideas, mere intellectual receptacles for beliefs. We then think of action as a kind of “withdrawal” from this bank of knowledge, as if our action and behavior were alway

who I am as a person, or who I am as a person of color? The question also lies at the heart of White privilege because, with Whites, it simply never has to be asked, for there is no double-consciousness. What pathology, then, arises when the soul’s dogged strength alone cannot keep these warring ideals apart?