Exemplar Education Quotes

the concept of ‘society’, against which antisocial and other ‘disordered’ behavior is measured, is merely a mask for whiteness, and considering that the epistemology responsible for these diagnostic criteria is itself an exemplar of whiteness, it is difficult to trust whiteness as an objective judge of what is and is not antisocial.

[I]t is important to underscore Kant’s basic point that the finitude of the human condition implies a life-long need for concrete moral examples and personal exemplars. With his second argument in defence of examples, we are no longer talking about a strategy of moral education that is to be applied only to children and that can be dispensed with once they reach adulthood. Adult human beings do have stronger powers of reflection and abstraction than do children. But even adults remain saddled with ‘a discursive image-dependent understanding’, and thus they will always need examples in order to make the law visible to themselves.

Exemplar teachers know a good day is not based on whether their students listened quietly and stayed seated in neat rows, but what the students actually learned. The focus is on student learning, not the teacher.

It took eleven weeks to organize the hunt for Osama bin Laden. When that hunt began in earnest, I was in eastern Afghanistan, in and around Jalalabad, where I had traveled on five trips over the years. An old acquaintance named Haji Abdul Qadir had just reclaimed his post as the provincial governor, two days after the fall of the Taliban. Haji Qadir was an exemplar of Afghan democracy. A well-educated and highly cultured Pathan tribal leader in his early sixties, a wealthy dealer in opium and weapons and other basic staples of the Afghan economy, he had been a CIA-supported commander in the fight against the Soviet occupation, the governor of his province from 1992 to 1996, and a close associate of the Taliban in their time. He personally welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and helped him establish a compound outside Jalalabad. Now he welcomed the American occupation. Haji Qadir was a good host. We walked in the gardens of the governor’s palace, through swayback palms and feathery tamarisks. He was expecting a visit from his American friends any day now, and he was looking forward to the renewal of old ties and the ritual exchange of cash for information.

Effects of racism on the psyche is the constant questioning of one’s worth and purpose. It can be almost as debilitating as death. Almost...American racism will take some of our lives while holding others of us up as exemplars of success providing the illusion that there is an escape. We do a disservice to our martyrs by imposing perfection upon them. We do a greater disservice to ourselves, the survivors and potential tokens, by not honestly reckoning with who our martyrs were and who they could have been.