Word: kessen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Yale's action reflects a widespread dissatisfaction over trying to apply numbers, or letters with pluses and minuses, to something as inexact as student performance. Explained Professor William Kessen, chairman of the committee that recommended the changes: "Whether a man gets a 72 or a 74 just doesn't reflect his performance, his knowledge, or anything." The new system, however, presents Yale students with one potential problem: in competing for entrance to graduate schools, they will have neither class rankings, nor point averages to present, will have to depend heavily on faculty recommendations and interviews...
...generally skeptical about the home-teaching trend, particularly the teaching of reading. They have little doubt that some parents can teach some three-year-olds and four-year-olds to read-but why should they? "No one has really given any sound reason for doing so," says Psychologist William Kessen of Yale's Child Study Center. Myra Woodruff, recently retired chief of New York State's Bureau of Child Development and Parent Education, believes that the real motivation for many parents to teach their tots is that "it represents status...