An opposing view? was Question about light and heat

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

||| LAURA SESSIONS STEPP WASHINGTON POST - Within a few weeks, some of
the most accomplished 18-year-olds this country has ever seen will march

across stages to pick up their diplomas, leaving behind grade-point
averages of 4.0 or better, SAT scores of 1600 or slightly less, National

Merit Scholarships, state gymnastics championships, internships at
superior courts, homes they've built for the poor in Appalachia . . . In

a country where a select college sticker has replaced bloodline as the
ticket to success, these young women and young men have done everything
they were told to do to get into U-Va. and Duke and Brown . . . The
machine runs 24-7, encouraging success, not balance or introspection. If

you have any doubt about that, sit down with a couple of
perfection-bound high school juniors or seniors and notice the circles
under their eyes from lack of sleep and downtime. Listen to the fingers
that tap the table nonstop as these students describe a typical day.

 . . . If they themselves haven't collapsed, they sure know classmates
who have, and they ask themselves occasionally whether the costs are too

high. They ask whether they will ever be able to stop running. They've
discovered the flaw in perfection: If they're always improving, do they
ever reach the point where they're satisfied with who they are?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27442-2002May3.html



Wes Davis wrote:

>     At the risk of bringing upon myself the wrath of the
> list, I have to express my complete dismay at reading
> posts from a college instructor of physics who writes
> like one of my high school students.  Is it because I'm
> a grouchy hexagenarian that I find the phrases "like",
> "totally", and "like, totally" painful?
>
>     A fascinating article by David W. Orr appeared in
> the Winter, 2000 - 2001 issue of the _American Educator_.
> The author claims that, over the past 50 years, the working
> vocabulary of the average 14-year old has declined from 25,000
> words to 10,000 words.  The author's position is as vocabulary
> is reduced, the ability to think - to form ideas - is also reduced.
>
>     "Because we cannot think clearly about what we cannot say
> clearly, the first casualty of linguistic incoherence is our ability
> to think well about many things."
>
>     Interesting, if so.
>
>     Wes Davis