... During the past forty fifty years those who are responsible for education have progressively removed from the curriculum ... the western culture which produced the modern democratic state. --Walter Lippmann, addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1940.

These quotes appear in Richard Rothstein's Twentieth Century Fund report on student achievement in the United States, The Way We Were? Rothstein's book should be required reading before any of us take to print on the current shortcomings of our schools. Life is always more complicated than the school war critics on both sides (actually there are far more than two sides) make out. The closer one gets to the schools, the more complicated it is even to sort out the sides. Ravitch presents a picture of our school crisis that often misses the nuances and complexities of the real situation.

My disagreements with Ravitch's argument may result from our different perspectives. It may be that the closer that one gets to a classroom, the less credible some of her explanations and solutions to our troubles appear.

The stories she tells--about how our textbooks and our curriculum have been systematically dumbed down--may lead one to forget about what actually happens in classrooms, not to mention in children's minds. That's the central problem with her argument: What goes on in kid's...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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