Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Last week, CNN reported on recent events in Garfield Heights, Ohio, where austerity measures have led local school officials to shorten the schoolday to five hours, get rid of subjects like art, music, and PE — and send kids home before lunch. What didn’t come out during the piece was that these drastic decisions were fueled in part by the community’s refusal, over a 20 year period, to pass a levy that would help support the schools. Like many places across the country, Garfield Heights’ residents were getting older, its younger people were moving away, and those that remained didn’t see sufficient value in a measure that would be used to support the education of other people’s children.
Continue reading…
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
This week, parents and guardians of schoolchildren across the country will receive their first report card of the 2011-2012 school year. For some, the occasion will provide welcome confirmation of a young person’s superior effort. Others will open their mail to find an uncomfortable wake up call. Yet for too many families, the report cards [...]
Continue reading…
Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Last week, I was asked by CNN to publicly comment on the news that most states will soon phase out cursive writing in order to give students more time to hone their digital skills. Initially, I wondered why the issue was receiving national coverage – there are much bigger fish to fry, after all – so I posed a Facebook query to that effect. A torrent of comments followed, and I received several long emails from viewers who saw the segment and felt compelled to share their thoughts. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion, and strong ones at that. Why, I wondered, were so many people so upset about this seemingly small development on the gigantic landscape of K-12 education reform?
Continue reading…
Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Should your zip code determine your access to the American dream? Or is the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee to provide “equal protection” a principle we have silently agreed to uphold in theory – but not in practice?
I’m starting to wonder after reading about Tanya McDowell, the Connecticut mother facing felony charges for lying on her five-year-old son’s registration forms so he could attend a better school. McDowell’s story is painfully reminiscent of Kelley Williams-Bolar, the Ohio mother who made a similar choice earlier this year – and is now a convicted felon.
Continue reading…
Categories:
Democracy,
Equity,
LearningTags: Brown v. Board of Education, CNN, Equity, fairness, Justice, Learning, Rodriguez, thurgood marshall, us supreme court
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 10:31 am
With Jon Stewart’s satirical/heretical/fantastical rally now just a few days away – and with memories of Glenn Beck’s own DC fiesta still a recent memory – I’ve been wondering what, if anything, these two cultural events have in common. As I do, I keep thinking about Erich Fromm’s 1941 classic Escape from Freedom, and how both men seem to be wrestling with the same tension Fromm explored in his psychological exploration of modern man – namely, our dialectical relationship with freedom itself, and what that relationship tells us about ourselves and the societies in which we live.
Continue reading…
