On Mar 2, 2010, at 5:51 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Jim Devine wrote:
[Diane Ravitch worked for G.H.W. Bush and is reputed to be a
conservative who supported "no child left behind."]
Ravitch Offers Passionate Defense of America’s Public School System
By ANDREW WOLF | March 2, 2010
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ravitch-offers-passionate-defense-of-americas/86906/
No silver bullets. This is the simple premise of Diane Ravitch’s new
book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” which
is being brought out this week by Basic Books. Written by one of our
nation’s most respected scholars, it has been eagerly awaited. But it
has also been, at least in some quarters, anticipated with a certain
foreboding, because it was likely to debunk much of the
conventional —
and some not so conventional — wisdom surrounding education reform.
A highly demagogic appeal, coming from the same angle as the
Republicans opposing Obama's attacks on Medicare. Take your choice.
Arsenic or strychnine. Both will kill you.
Actually Diane Ravitch is better than that. My in-laws are progressive
educators, and they tell me that Ravitch has really rejected the right
on education. She's made an unlikely alliance with Debbie Meier, the
doyenne of progressive educators - against the Obama gang, which is
very much in the school-as-business camp. Both Obama and his education
secretary, Arne Duncan, have endorsed the mass firing of the entire
faculty of the Central Falls, RI, high school. The other week, Duncan
said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to
education in New Orleans, since it enabled the mass promotion of
charters - a statement indistinguishable from comments made by Milton
Friedman. If it weren't for electoral constraints, Obama and Duncan
would probably join the right in denouncing teachers unions. They're
heading in that direction, but haven't arrived yet.
Doug_______________________________________________
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