Excerpt from Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? It was all in fun, and the culprit turned out to be one of my best students. But the phrases ground themselves into my mind. Lurking behind the words were some interesting social meanings. It was not hard to detect in the educational world of the 1930's echoes Of the same equalitarianism that rang in those phrases. The subject has never ceased to interest me. This is a book about excellence, more particularly about the conditions under which excellence is possible in our kind Of society; but it is also - inevitably - a book about equality, about the kinds of equality that can and must be honored, and the kinds that cannot be forced. Such a book must raise some questions which Americans have shown little inclination to discuss rationally. What are the characteristic difficulties a democracy encounters in pursuing excellence? Is there a way out of these difficulties? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.