High Expectations

From a Washington Post article about how 'Gingrich and Sharpton both agree that education can be improved!!' WOW!

"What's a high expectation?" Hassan Floyd, 7, asked his mother, Fathma Floyd-Brent, a teacher who works in a Baltimore high school with no air conditioning or computers and has one of the lowest graduation rates in the city.

"It's when I tell you I don't expect no 70s, 80s or 90s," she said. "But 100s."

The boy, who is already talking about going to college and one day being president, nodded knowingly."


What is a high expectation? 100s. No standard for how to judge that 100. It could be that he merely turned in the work, despite getting every single question wrong. Or maybe that he wrote 1 paragraph instead of 2.

The other day, I was listening to this NPR segment about whether or not business schools can be held accountable for the recession. A portion of the piece talked about how business schools have yet to streamline the body of knowledge taught, unlike law schools and medical schools. The same could be said for almost every grade level of schooling, except for law schools and medical schools.

So, if we have different standards, how can we arrive at any other definition of a 'high expectation' other than '100s'? Are high expectations really like pornography, you know it when you see it?