I had to laugh this morning, watching the usual parade of expert white guys on Morning Joe. This time it was Council of Foreign Relations chief Richard Haass making some sense about the futility of a military strategy for Afghanistan. A 20,000-troop "surge" is no long-term solution, he said. We've got to do more to build up the infrastructure. Like in their schools, which now focus on "rote memorization rather than real intellectual work."
Isn't it great, how smart we are about other peoples' children?
Hm. Paul Goodman used to say we treated our own country "like a conquered province." Apparently we've sunk below that point.
ReplyDeleteYou're right Tom.
ReplyDeleteIt adds an extra sense of irony to the proposition in A Nation at Risk: "If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
But ANAR's response wasn't to transform the two-tiered education system into a more democratic one. Rather, it was to reinforce it through this current accountability wave.