We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children’s worth.
ATTRIBUTION:
Kenneth Kenniston. Originally quoted in “The 11-Year Olds of Today Are the Computer Terminals of Tomorrow,” New York Times (February 19, 1976). Quoted in The Hurried Child, by David Elkind, ch. 3 (1988).
