Derek Bok
Derek Bok
Derek Curtis Bokis an American lawyer and educator and the former president of Harvard University. He is the son of Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Curtis Bok and Margaret Plummer Bok; the grandson of Ladies' Home Journal editor Edward W. Bok and Mary Louise Curtis Bok Zimbalist, founder of the Curtis Institute of Music; the cousin of prominent Maine folklorist Gordon Bok; and the great-grandson of Cyrus H. K. Curtis, founder of the Curtis Publishing Company, publisher of national magazines such...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth22 March 1930
CountryUnited States of America
Freshly minted Ph.Ds typically teach the way their favorite professors taught.
Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.
Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.
I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged.
I think the minority students that we admit to Harvard are every bit as meritorious as the white students that we admit.
The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions.
Universities are institutions run by amateurs to train professionals.
Efforts to develop critical thinking falter in practice because too many professors still lecture to passive audiences instead of challenging students to apply what they have learned to new questions.
There are no tests similar to SATs to tell us how much undergraduates know. State legislators, who appropriate billions of dollars each year to higher education, are naturally interested in finding out what they are getting for their money.
Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.
The first country to adopt happiness as an official goal of public policy is the tiny little country of Bhutan in Asia near China and India.
An educated man must have a "curiosity in exploring the unfamiliar and unexpected, an open-mindedness in entertaining opposing points of view, tolerance for the ambiguity that surrounds so many important issues, and a willingness to make the best decisions he can in the face of uncertainty and doubt".
There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.