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
There's a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.
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".
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.
Universities are institutions run by amateurs to train professionals.
Doctoral training is devoted almost entirely to learning to do research, even though most Ph.Ds who enter academic life spend far more time teaching than they do conducting experiments or writing books.
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.
Education, and I regret to say this as an educator, but there's no indication that education has a direct effect on happiness.
Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers... reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
Despite the hours spent debating different models of general education, the choices faculties make rarely lead to any significant difference in the cognitive development of undergraduates.
I don't think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.
I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say.
I think the minority students that we admit to Harvard are every bit as meritorious as the white students that we admit.