Beware of Reformers Bearing Gifts
Some lessons from "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door"
School choice. Parental rights. Market efficiency. Personalized learning. We've all heard such slogans in discussions of education, and it's easy to simply nod and agree with efforts to achieve such things. After all, who ISN'T in favor of choice or rights or efficiency or personalization, right? But the fine print behind these and other seemingly positive slogans reveal systematic efforts to chip away at the public schools we depend on. Like the trojan horse the ancient Greeks used to conquer Troy by surprise, these seemingly different and helpful slogans to "reform" public education in fact seek to conquer it.
This is the main point of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire. Through a series of carefully footnoted chapters, the book argues that such slogans are rooted in an underlying ideology that seeks to dismantle the public schools in the U.S. The ideology was once held only by extremists, and existed only on the fringes of policy discussions. But political changes in recent years have allowed the ideology into the mainstream. It now represents a significant and immediate threat to our schools, because so many people don't know the actual policies that lie behind such positive-sounding terms as parental rights or school choice; policies that-- when asked more directly-- large majorities of Americans oppose, both Republicans and Democrats alike.
A Community Discussion
I had the opportunity to discuss the book in depth last week with fifteen people from the East Penn community who responded to my offer earlier this summer. Hearing how others interpreted the book really enriched by own understanding of it and how we might use the book to better support and improve our own East Penn schools. Jack Schneider, one of the book's authors, also joined us at the end of our discussion to answer our questions. Despite the grim picture the book paints of the current threat, he remains optimistic about the future. There was a time in American history where public schools didn't exist; only the wealthy and well-connected had access to formal education. But ordinary people have consistently fought for better public schools that are inclusive of ever more kinds of kids. Today, over 90% of us have attended public schools, and large majorities of Americans support free and universal public education for all. He thinks citizens and voters will reject the policies behind these slogans like market efficiency and personalized learning once they know more about how they chip away at public schools.
(And a special thanks to Let's Play Books for discounting the book price for discussion participants and allowing us to use their store as our meeting place.)
Help Create More Community Connections!
I write this newsletter in order to connect as many members of the East Penn community as possible to the issues and concerns of our East Penn schools. Face to face discussions like those we had last week about A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door remind me of how important it is to connect with each to better learn and understand the changing world that exists right outside each of our doors. I hope this newsletter does that too in its own small way, as many of you respond with your own thoughts and ideas about what I write each week.
Would you help me expand the network of connections? Please share this post with friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and anyone else you think might care about our schools. If any one of them signs up for my newsletter with the button below, I will send you my full, personal notes on A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door. I know this is a little thing, but I also hope it might be at least a little bit interesting and useful. My full notes identify four themes of the book beyond what I've covered here, concise summaries of each of the 12 chapters in the book, and dozens of direct quotes from the book that I found to be helpful.
I'd love to expand the conversations we're having about our schools to more people and more topics. I hope you'll help me do it.
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