TITLE: The Big Picture
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 13, 2015 12:12 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I just turned in my grades.  For the most part, this is boring
paperwork.  Neither students nor faculty really like grades;
they are something we all have to do as a part of the system.
A lot of people would like to change the system and eliminate
grades, but every alternative has its own weaknesses.  So we
all muddle along.

But there is a bigger picture, one which
<A HREF="http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2015/05/kids-today-response-to-mark-bauerlein.html">
    Matt Reed</A>
expresses eloquently:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Tolstoy once claimed that there are really only two stories,
 and we keep telling each of them over and over again: a
 stranger comes to town, and a hero goes on a quest.  In
 higher education, we live those two stories continuously.
 Every semester, a new crop of strangers come to town.  And
 every semester, we set a new group of heroes off on their
 respective quests.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's May, so we see a new group of young people set of on their
own quests.  In a few months, we will welcome a new group of
strangers.  In between are the students who are in the middle
of their own "stranger comes to town" story, who will return
to us in the fall a little different yet much the same.

That's the big picture.
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