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The success of a market ideology that has produced shocking levels of inequality and impoverishment, along with a market morality that makes greed and corruption ubiquitous, should raise fundamental questions about how viable such a philosophy is for educational reform in the United States. Obama's vision of education is largely centered around an economic discourse and rationality tied to the past, to the world and business values of investment bankers, insurance companies, and various other institutions in a market-driven culture that viewed aiding society largely with contempt. What the Obama administration must understand is that the crisis in education is not only an economic problem that requires resuscitating the values of the Gilded Age, but a political and ethical crisis about the very nature of citizenship and democracy. Obama and Duncan, on the issue of educational reform, appear to be stuck in reverse.

www.truthout.org/072409A - Preview

arne_duncan Obama henry_giroux education neoliberalism

The bottom line assumption of the participants in the 1990 conference was that The Problem With
Education In America was a people problem. They may have agreed with the management thesis that
when a business or industry isn’t performing adequately, there’s probably something wrong with the
system, but they didn’t think that applied to education. And they still don’t. They’re convinced that the
system is basically okay, that it’s the people in it who are to blame for its poor performance, and by
Gawd they better shape up. What students and teachers need, the standards and accountability people
believe, is religion, America’s religion—a massive dose of market forces: Raise the bar and stimulate
competition. Human nature being what it is, the drive to survive being so powerful, given the option of
swimming or sinking, people will choose to swim. And, once having learned to swim, market forces will
prod them to swim ever faster.
So introduce competition, competition with a vengeance. Pit student against student, teacher against
teacher, administrator against administrator, school against school, system against system, state against
state, nation against nation. Stimulate the competition by constant testing, by publicizing performance
statistics, by holding failure up to public shame, by heaping praise or money on the successful. Stimulate
competition with vouchers, with school choice plans, with pay tied to performance, with threats of dire
consequences for failure. Anything. Sure it’s a little brutal, sure it makes most students and teachers
losers, but that’s life. Let Darwin take the hindmost

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education reform Marion_Brady

This page was last edited on 06/15/2004 07:48:11. It was originated and is currently maintained by Professor Robert N. Barger. It is dedicated to the late F. Raymond McKenna, longtime Professor of Philosophy and History of Education at Eastern Illinois University. It has been designated as an "Internet Site of the Day" by THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION and also as a selection of the Internet Scout Report for the Social Sciences.

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history education

James G. Carter, a member of the Massachusetts legislature is called the "Father of the American Normal School". He was influential in the passage of a bill creating the first State Board of Education in Massachusetts. Horace Mann was named the first secretary on June 29, 1837. Mann said at the dedication of the Lexington school "I believe Normal Schools to be a new instrumentality in the advancement of the race. I believe that, without them, Free Schools themselves would be shorn of their strength and their healing power and would at length become mere charity schools and thus die out in fact and in form."

The direction of education at this time was influenced by the teaching methods of Prussian schools, as developed by Pestalozzi. He described the process of teaching as directing the child in the unfolding of his latent powers and emphasized the harmonious development of the individual's faculties into a complete personality. This was a far cry from rote memorization, basically the only teaching method being utilized at this point in the U.S. There was a real need to provide the type of education which would foster a critical thinking populace. Daniel Webster said "Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant -- give them the means of detecting wrong, and they will apply the remedy."

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history education

This is a site about education during the 20th century, organized by decades. It includes short descriptions of 'educational episodes' that took place in that period. The episode in question could be a policy, a court case, a piece of legislation, a scholarly article, a theory, a project, a research report, an incident, the release of a book, a speech, an empirical finding, a tragedy, an acomplishment, a conference, the opening or a closure of an institution, a film, an anecdote, or anything, big or small, that tells us something about education theory, policy, politics, research or practice during the last century. Arguably, some of these episodes have been more historically significant or influential than others, and some may be more well-known than others, but each one uncovers a piece of that immense puzzle that was 20th century education. Education is understood here in its broadest sense, and not only as schooling. Although its current emphasis is on North American educational developments, there is an ongoing effort to include more international content.

Most entries have been written especially for this site (many of them by education students), although some consist of links to other webpages. Cross references are used to show connections between different moments. New entries are added regularly. If you would like to submit an entry, make a comment to improve this site, or suggest a link to a webpage to be added to this compilation, please send it to: dschugurensky@oise.utoronto.ca.

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education history

richardkahn.org/...freireillich.pdf - Preview

pdf technology media culture education

collection of articles on incentives, charters, mayoral control...

www.ndol.org/ndol_ka.cfm - Preview

new-democrat agenda politics education

Whitehurst: We should not believe, as adults, in Santa Claus or magic to solve our problems. If we're thinking about innovation, we need to get serious about what it is, what types we're interested in, and how we expect to use processes of innovation to advance education.

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education research interviews

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pdf history education

[via hoffman's shared:Stories Teachers Tell Themselves
from Mark Guzdial's Amazon Blog by Mark GuzdialSunstein is just one of a number of high-level appointees now working in the Obama administration who favors this kind of approach.

All are devotees of behavioral economics — a school of economic thought greatly influenced by psychological research — which argues that the human animal is hard-wired to make errors when it comes to decision-making, and therefore people need a little "nudge" to make decisions that are in their own best interests.

And that is exactly what Obama administration officials plan to do: By taking account of human psychology, they hope to save you from yourself.

This is the story of how obscure psychological research into human decision-making first revolutionized economics and now appears poised to remake the relationship between the government and its citizens.

www.npr.org/...story.php - Preview

psychology education economics

This article documents significant historical events and trends that have helped to shape the policies and practices of education in Alaska, particularly those that have most directly impacted the schooling of Alaska Native people.

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carol_barnhardt UAF history native education alaska

Through our member unions around the world, Education International is working hard to persuade governments to invest in education as a strategic response to the crisis, not to cut it. Give us the tools to teach, to help build the knowledge society of the future. We are part of the solution. We are 30 million strong, from early childhood to higher education, we can make a difference!

www.ei-ie.org/en - Preview

economic education

In 2009, the major fight on education policy isn't between Republicans and unions, or even Republicans and Democrats, but rather within the Democratic coalition. And infighting can be the most vicious kind. On one side are the traditional players in education politics -- the two major teachers' unions, the NEA and the AFT. On the other are union-skeptic education-policy wonks like Rhee, sometimes referred to as "reformers." (The unions dispute that terminology, arguing that they too support the improvement of American schools.) Union-lobbying efforts focus on greater funding for public schools and social services more generally and on opposition to the punishing mandates of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. The self-designated "reformers," on the other hand, are often enthusiastic about NCLB and testing and are intent on pursuing new management policies, such as merit pay, public charter schools, and even private-school vouchers. They believe, broadly speaking, that free-market principles applied to public schools will improve student achievement, especially in low-income communities of color.

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dana_goldstein education wars

www.prospect.org/...tapped_archive - Preview

education wars

Wesley Fryer's list of education blogs

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blogs education

With the retreat of the movements of the 1960s, the government's approach to prisons and prisoners was pulled in a more conservative direction, like other social policies. The idea that it should be a concern of society to help prisoners better themselves disappeared; instead, prison became a place where people were thrown away to pay for their crimes.

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prison education

I asked the first question to Newt, equating the bypassing of educators in crafting education reform to America's disastrous de-Baathification policy after invading Iraq. Some eyebrows were raised.

Here's where I was coming from:

It's safe to say we all agree that American public schools need drastic improvement. However, Gingrich and his ideological compatriots' wholesale slapping of the labels "OBSOLETE! FAILED! CO-CONSPIRATOR! on all public schools and everyone in them is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This kind of dismissive rhetoric paves the way for ideologues to impose their will unchecked.

Newt called today's public schools a "monopoly of failure," tossing the blame for the decline of public education at "departments of education, schools of education, and unionized bureaucracy." In other words, everyone who works in or near public schools. Newt argued that people from any of his three culpable camps are inherently corrupted by their stake in the failed system, and will blindly defend that system to protect themselves.

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education reform gingrich 5.31.09

Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what many suspected: the new administration--despite internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk is that in doing so the administration will alienate supporters with a more nuanced view of education policy.

schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/...-obamas-cynical-education.html - Preview

education policy reform

a subtle shift in the education policy wind?

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education policy reform nancy_flanagan

Do we need to gut our public schools in order to save them? I ask: Who are WE?

www.pbs.org/...index.html - Preview

NOW media education