On the Other Hand

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As the pressure to “reform” public education has mounted, I have written and spoken against adopting a business model or factory model in which our children are the products to which value must be added, value measurable by numbers meant to translate eventually to dollars. I am saddened by the recent death of Dr. Donald Graves, an outstanding educator whose book, Testing Is Not Teaching, I continue to find inspiring and encouraging, like a voice crying out in the wilderness of dehumanization, the current desert of the human spirit. I find the billionaires-generated push toward privatization nauseating as I brace for the waves of hatred and ignorant blame coming at teachers after the release of the propaganda film, “Waiting for Superman.”

Even so, I am haunted by Jonathan Kozol’s books, Amazing Grace and The Shame of the Nation (the latter subtitled, The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America).

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