In a message dated 11/4/02 4:30:31 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << I think Bill would say that he's pretty sure. He's seen the data, crunched the numbers, read the literature, etc. If you feel comfortable failing people on their exams, why shouldn't you feel comfortable giving them a failing grade on their decision-making outside of the classroom? >>
It's one thing to say that someone has failed the narrow task of grasping the subject matter of one class, and quite another to say that someone has failed the make the "right" choices in life. The first involved only making a narrow technical assessment; the second a broad moral judgement of the sort that I thought went out of style with the 19th century movement of WASP elites to "Americanize" all the foolish foreign immigrants (or at least with the 1950s attempt to force everyone into the same bland, homogenized soul-less mainstream religion in the name of fighting godless Communism). Still, I believe that people are entitled to their judgements, however inappropriate they may be, but it's a third thing entirely to think oneself entitled to use the government's monopoly (or near-monopoly in the American case) of legitimized use or threat of force to make people behave according to one's own moral judgements. David Levenstam
