Where Are the Political Superstars
I used to go to the theater with an elderly aunt. Whenever I expressed my delight with a performance she would sigh and tell me that it was mediocre compared to what she had seen in her younger days. At first I listened with respect for the wisdom of experience, but before long I became increasingly vexed and eventually stopped paying any attention to her. My good aunt, I came to feel, could not appreciate what took place in front of her, for she could only see it through the distorting lenses of nostalgia. More recently I have had a very similar reaction when alumni of my university speak of the awe-inspiring teachers of the past who are said to put the dullards who now occupy their chairs to shame. They may have been autocrats, but they were master performers who got their message across in no uncertain terms. Professors just do not seem to come that way anymore, so it appears, and students are the poorer for it. Here, too, fond memories seem to me to disallow that different times and different students may call for different, though not necessarily less effective, teaching methods.