Two Wrongs and Two Rights: Reason and Responsibility

I am honored by the articulate comments of the respondents to the questions raised in the lead paper, “Two Wrongs Do Not Make a Right: Sacrificing the Needs of Gifted Students Does Not Solve Society’s Unsolved Problems.” These five colleagues have proved themselves to be sensitive to the multiple issues and constituencies involved and highly constructive in their suggestions of steps to be taken to right the wrongs to which I referred. While we may not agree on some of the details (more of this later), we seem, for the most part, to be on the same wavelength. Karen Rogers recalls accurately the intense discomfort we felt at that Wallace Symposium. Most of the six of us were there, I think, enduring what we saw as a mean-spirited, yes, racist, discussion of the real-life effects of limitations in intellectual and economic resources. Karen is right, too, in commenting that with retirement comes the chance to say what you have previously been too timid to say, afraid of offending or having it heard as disrespectful.