STOP POLITICIZING EDUCATION!

April 1, 2015

The politicalizing of American public education keeps gathering steam. Education, the heart of any democratic system, is continually under attack as politicians relentlessly strive to bend it to their own uses.

And, in that process, we all suffer.

George Washington certainly recognized the importance of education: “There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

Recently, I have read a couple of articles that, while addressing the subject from separate angles, deserve our attention. (Hopefully, you’ll find time to read them in full.)

The first quote comes from THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, in a piece written by Steve Wasserman, “In Defense of Difficulty: A phony populism is denying Americans the joys of serious thought”:

“. . . Sometimes it feels as if the world is divided into two classes: one very large class spurns difficulty, while the other very much smaller delights in it. There are readers who, when encountering an unfamiliar word, instead of reaching for a dictionary, choose to regard it as a sign of the author’s contempt or pretension, a deliberate refusal to speak in a language ordinary people can understand. Others, encountering the same word, happily seize on it as a chance to learn something new, to broaden their horizons. They eagerly seek a literature that upends assumptions, challenges prejudices, turns them inside out and forces them to see the world through new eyes.

The second group is an endangered species. One reason is that the ambitions of mainstream media that, however fitfully, once sought to expose them to the life of the mind and to the contest of ideas, have themselves shrunk. We have gone from the heyday of television intellection which boasted shows hosted by, among others, David Susskind and David Frost, men that, whatever their self-absorptions, were nonetheless possessed of an admirable highmindedness, to the pygmy sound-bite rants of Sean Hannity and the inanities of clowns like Stephen Colbert. . . . “

The second, “You’ve heard the phrase ‘college and career readiness.’ But what exactly is it?” by Valerie Strauss and published in THE WASHINGTON POST:

“. . . And indeed, students should be allowed to fail, perhaps even encouraged in a safe environment such as schools because what comes after failure – perseverance, grit, problem solving – are the same qualities employers cite to explain why they can’t hire entry-level applicants.

So while political operatives might be tempted to score points in 2016 by highlighting educational differences in their candidates, the secret to reviving America’s public schools may lie in getting Republican and Democrat lawmakers to increase coherence for teacher and students about how today’s academic skills fit into college and career readiness. . . . “

A good summation piece comes from Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, in an OpEd piece for THE NEW YORK TIMES, “Learning as Freedom”:

“. . . Dewey’s (John Dewey) insight that learning in the process of living is the deepest form of freedom. In a nation that aspires to democracy, that’s what education is primarily for: the cultivation of freedom within society. We should not think of schools as garrisons protecting us from enemies, nor as industries generating human capital. Rather, higher education’s highest purpose is to give all citizens the opportunity to find “large and human significance” in their lives and work.”