{"id":3773,"date":"2010-03-03T23:06:55","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T03:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=3773"},"modified":"2010-03-03T23:06:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T03:06:55","slug":"public-education-cornerstone-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2010\/03\/03\/public-education-cornerstone-of-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Education: Cornerstone of Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve often founds mid-life reversals &#8211; whether personal or policy-based &#8211; rather interesting. \u00c2\u00a0So that&#8217;s why I found myself reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/03\/education\/03ravitch.html\">this piece<\/a> on a lifelong standardized-testing\/charter-schools advocate who has decided she was wrong:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing,\u00c2\u00a0<a title=\"More articles about charter schools.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/subjects\/c\/charter_schools\/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier\">charter schools<\/a>and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. [ . . . ]<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153School reform today is like a freight train, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m out on the tracks saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going the wrong way!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Maybe so, maybe not. \u00c2\u00a0I really don&#8217;t follow it enough to know. \u00c2\u00a0But there&#8217;s a throwaway in the story that really grabbed me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2005, she said, a study she undertook of Pakistan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weak and inequitable education system, dominated by private and religious institutions, convinced her that protecting the United States\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 public schools was important to democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Democracy is meaningless without an educated population. \u00c2\u00a0It is a basic &#8211; and essential &#8211; function of society to provide a decent public education to anyone who wants it. \u00c2\u00a0That isn&#8217;t to say that private or charter schools should be excluded &#8211; if someone wants to bear the cost of sending their child to one, they should be free to have at it. \u00c2\u00a0But not at the expense of a fundamentally sound public school system. \u00c2\u00a0And the undermining of that public school system too often seems to be the motivating force behind so many reform and charter school advocates. \u00c2\u00a0Using private and charter schools to indoctrinate, instead of educate, will only send us more quickly down the path of ruin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve often founds mid-life reversals &#8211; whether personal or policy-based &#8211; rather interesting. \u00c2\u00a0So that&#8217;s why I found myself reading this piece on a lifelong standardized-testing\/charter-schools advocate who has decided she was wrong: Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing,\u00c2\u00a0charter schoolsand free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3775,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions\/3775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}