A Nation Deceived

A Nation Deceived - How schools hold back bright students. A great read, but I'm not so sure about the provocative title.
The report is focussed on the US, but one of the authors is the Professor of Gifted Education at GERRIC at the UNSW.

The Right Words

I love this entry by Mark Pilgrim. It is simply a quote from 'The Real Thing', a play by Tom Stoppard.

Stoppard's Henry says:

I can’t help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech… Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more, and Brodie knocks corners off without knowing he’s doing it. So everything he writes is jerry-built. It’s rubbish. An intelligent child could push it over. I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.