It looked like an article on military failure in Iraq, and I didn’t have the heart for it, so I went right past it the first time. But Bryan Alexander’s blog persuaded me to take a look. I found I was wrong. (Excellent demonstration of the usefulness of critics and commentators.) The article is just what Bryan says it is. I look forward to his extended treatment, because the article’s riches are so many and so diverse–and almost all of them about education.

The thought of hanging on the morrow concentrates the mind wonderfully, wrote Johnson. Obviously, combat supplies plenty of motivation for that mental concentration. So moved, the soldiers make their school out of themselves, shared on a virtual front porch, outside the dulling standardization of official training, but not outside wisdom, thoughtfulness, and the need to synthesize varying advice, experience, and knowledge into judgment when there’s no time for anything but a realist epistemology–“thus, thus I refute thee,” as the tracers whistle overhead–and a Platonic faith in the value of community.

An extraordinary article. Every teacher and school administrator should read it. Thanks to Bryan for blogging on it.