tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21978939.post5331049598481227217..comments2024-02-17T09:15:28.288-05:00Comments on Norm's Notes: Ravitch answers Gatesed notes onlinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15018047869059226777noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21978939.post-68930520225083144342010-11-30T16:20:06.121-05:002010-11-30T16:20:06.121-05:00Posted by Steve Koss on NYCEdnews Listserve
Congr...Posted by Steve Koss on NYCEdnews Listserve<br /><br />Congratulations to Diane for crushing Mr. Gates in this<br />not-exactly-face-to-face debate. She is, as always, perfectly spot-on<br />in her assessments, and more honestly frank in her judgments than ANY<br />of the so-called education reformers.<br /><br />No disrespect intended, but nothing Diane said in this Valerie Strauss<br />piece is the mark of genius -- I suspect Ms. Ravitch would say the<br />same. It's all just common sense! Granted, it comes with an outstanding<br />sense of historical perspective and admirably balanced analysis, but in<br />the end it's just common sense. That's what makes Diane's work so<br />powerful. We can all read it and shake our heads in the affirmative<br />and think, "Of course, that's what education is, and what it should<br />be." In my case, I can thankfully say that it was largely the education<br />I was fortunate enough to have had.<br /><br />So here's the thing -- if it's all so obvious, why are the so-called<br />"education reformers" heading down such a destructive,<br />non-commonsensical path? There can only be two reasons, both<br />inextricably intertwined: ideology and money. Both will be the death of<br />American education in anything like the form by which we have always<br />idealized it.<br /><br />I used to think that a deep and thorough knowledge of American and<br />world history, facility with algebra-based mathematics, conceptual as<br />well as hands-on knowledge of science, understanding of the history of<br />art, and of course knowledge of, and ability to read and share Plato,<br />Cervantes, Conrad, Melville, Dickens, Hawthorne, Dostoyevsky,<br />Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Keats, Shelley, Pope, Yeats, T.S. Eliot,<br />Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Emerson, Thoreau, and the like were<br />what constituted a good education by the end of high school. Never have<br />I felt like such a dinosaur where it comes to education as now.<br /><br />One need only look at charter schools to see the new wave --<br />militaristic, conformist, uniformed, narrow-scoped, behavioralist (B.F.<br />Skinner would be appalled, I suspect), uni-cultured in the corporate<br />style (no slouching, no pencil twirling, no sighing or eye rolling,<br />clean clothes, no shirttails out, look the speaker in the eyes, nod<br />your head, etc., or receive demerits) over-disciplined, selectively<br />exclusive by forced departures, measurable, high turnover of<br />inexpensive, burned out staff (McDonald's, Wal-Mart), dependent on the<br />largesse of and controlled by corporate elites, and so on.<br /><br />Steve Kossed notes onlinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15018047869059226777noreply@blogger.com