Only public education, James Bryant Conant said in 1942, could restore the key American ideals of opportunity, democracy, and classlessness. These ideals were also Horace Mann’s goals for the Common School. Public education was intended to establish equality of opportunity, promote democratic ideals, and, although not right at the beginning when the country was still [...]
Archive for May 2009
Do No Harm
May 29, 2009Latina Women and White Men
May 28, 2009Is the Sotomayor Berkeley 2001 statement that’s now being bandied about racist? Here’s what she said, not in the context of her full talk (for that you can go here): “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a [...]
The Public Good, who now speaks for it?
May 25, 2009George Will, in an op ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, while critically assessing Zephyr Teachout’s argument (“The Anti-Corruption Principle,”) for emancipating government from First Amendment restrictions on its powers to regulate political speech, has this to say: Congressional Democrats want to kill a small voucher program that gave some mostly poor and minority students [...]
Schooling and Education, 3
May 24, 2009Schooling is easy. Education is hard. Schooling takes place in a school, when a classroom, teacher, and kids are provided, usually at tax payer expense. Education, aka learning, may take place anywhere, but only if the learner is interested and excited either by the teacher or the subject matter, or, best of all, by both. [...]
Kids are human capital
May 23, 2009The problem is usually not a lack of knowledge. There is enough knowledge out there to solve most of our problems. The problem is getting the people in power to drink of the knowledge that is available. A case in point is our system of public school education. Claudia Goldin, in a June 2001 article. [...]
Optimism goes away but hope remains.
May 22, 2009In an interview published in The Journal of American History in March of 1994, the historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, had this to say in response to a question about the distinction he made between hope and optimism. [Lasch was interviewed by two of his former graduate students in the summer of 1993. At [...]
Nation building? Forget it. Not in our power.
May 21, 2009Today, on Anderson Cooper’s Blog site I read this comment from Christiane Amanpour: President Obama’s biggest challenge will be Afghanistan and Pakistan. He wants to beat back the militants, but all the U.S. commanders and officers I have talked to say that cannot be done by bombs and bullets alone. It must happen in tandem [...]
Victor Hugo, le 21 août 1849
May 21, 2009Le 21 août 1849, un congrès de la paix se réunit a Paris. Vicor Hugo en était le président et il y fit un discours où le grand poète se montre aussi un grand prophète. En voici la partie la plus célèbre: Un jour viendra où les armes vous tomberont des mains, à vous aussi [...]
The United States and Russia, is it over between them?
May 21, 2009[from everything2.com] Alexis de Tocqueville only spent one year in the United States before he wrote “Democracy in America” (1835), which is still one of the best books about that country. The last page of the first volume describes the future evolution of the Russians and the Americans. The English translation is mine, so don’t [...]
Richard Thompson Ford, The End of Civil Rights
May 17, 2009Well, I do wonder if President Obama has seen the op ed piece by Richard Thompson Ford, The End of Civil Rights, in today’s Boston Globe. For Ford makes it clear that the problems confronting Blacks — poverty and unemployment, educational achievement gaps, drug addiction, children without fathers, high rates of imprisonment, and other such [...]
