Part of Norton's "Issues of Our Time" series, the four rigorous essays collected here take up four questions about American higher education: "Why is it so hard to institute a general education curriculum?
At times, Bubbles reads distinctly like one of those poetic, rigorous and slightly mad essays that posits a single form as pseudo-scientific key to all mythologies and mores: Emerson's essay on "Circles" ("the highest emblem in the cipher of the world") or Sir Thomas Browne's "The Garden of Cyrus", in which the 17th-century physician spies a five-pointed "quincunx" everywhere in nature.
It is precisely these qualities that Dr. Sternberg and Mr. White say a written test can identify in a more rigorous way than interviews, essays or written recommendations can.
She writes in an essay, "Devine's rigorous and uncompromising approach is exacting, tyrannical and masterful.
Even then you need to be invited, or put yourself through a rigorous application procedure, including an essay question, and a system of mysterious positive vetting all designed to ensure you are "curious, creative, playful and open-minded".
This is a far cry from the rigorous examinations and thoroughly graded essays that characterize the best college courses.
'I hope so.' " Memoir is often accused of being the most indulgent literary genre, and the first two essays, intellectually and imaginatively rigorous, provide a kind of apology for the third.
These "essay readers" go through a rigorous online training process to ensure they understand how to score the essays in a holistic manner according to College Board standards.
Unfortunately, most states did not invest in rigorous, high-quality exams with open-ended essay questions that test reasoning skill.
Resembling a Chris Marker film essay without the narration, the rigorous structure and the intellectual jokes, "Paradise" comprises 44 discrete scenes.
