In Search of Excellence

     I've stolen the title of this post from the classic Tom Peters work. I've been thinking about this idea because he recently published his fantastic The Excellence Dividend, which pulls together myriad points from his long career. If you've read this blog and followed my Twitter feed, you know my thoughts on the excellence dividend of education are clear: when one's endless learning becomes part of a life with distinct meaning and purpose. I hope, to use Tom's standard, that provokes a bit of a "Wow!" response.
     I'm more interested in pondering here why completing that search proves so elusive. Reasons abound, ranging from the pragmatic to the philosophical. I think the latter are the more suppressive ones in that we tend not to think of education in such idealistic terms. Instead, we focus on the utilitarian, the practical. Then the process becomes rather mechanical, overly reliant on systems and measurement. We somewhat de-humanize what should be the most human of endeavors.
     Ironically, or perhaps paradoxically, even when people share my philosophical position, true academic excellence becomes even more difficult. It's because we have to cede most of the time-honored forms of control. We have to rethink the markers of short- and long-term success. We have to trust.
     But it's even more complicated than that. For an education to be truly responsive, it must evolve continually, responding to the vagaries of human nature and culture. Yes, certain questions and topics possess an eternal quality; yet we must consider them in the light of the emerging world. There lies little value in examining the past without using it to figure out the present and shape the future.
     Even then, the challenge remains great because excellence ultimately will mean something different for each individual. It demands the ultimate differentiation. It insists we react, reflect, readjust...over and over and over.  It changes as each student changes. It changes as the teacher changes.
     At its best, it also remains an ongoing search, a quest for a mythical grail. Certainly it is that noble.