BY HANK REICHMAN A Texas school superintendent has now apologized after one of his top officials advised teachers that, if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom library, they should give students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective. Nevertheless, the assault on classroom and school libraries in Texas and elsewhere,…
BY HANK REICHMAN Yesterday AAUP President Irene Mulvey issued a statement condemning President Trump’s attack on critical race theory as “a naked attempt to politicize our national reckoning with racism and a new escalation in the assault on expert knowledge.” This was not, however, Trump’s only such attempt. Less than 48 hours after tweeting that…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Mary Grabar, a fellow at the right-wing Alexander Hamilton Institute, has written an essay praising Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) for introducing the Saving American History Act of 2020, “a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.” This is…
BY HANK REICHMAN No sooner had I posted my COVID-19 and Higher Education annotated reading list, than two pieces appeared that also deserve attention. The first is by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University. Her book, Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, is…
BY JOHN K. WILSON On Friday, op-ed columnist David Brooks of the New York Times published one of his classic tone-deaf attempts to offer big thoughts on our times: “The Age Of Coddling Is Over.” The headline was absolutely right. Not because the coronavirus has suddenly made us all realize the virtues of hardship, but…
BY STEVEN LUBET It was inevitable that the film “Remember the Titans” would be mentioned in the headlines of Herman Boone’s obituaries. He was the real-life African American football coach of a real-life integrated high school team in Alexandria, Virginia, that won the real-life 1971 state championship, and he passed away last month at age…
BY ROBERT CHERNY On June 25, 2019, the San Francisco school board voted unanimously to either paint out or cover with solid panels the thirteen separate murals that make up The Life of Washington, a WPA-funded art project by Victor Arnautoff. The board’s decision came after several years of advocacy led by the district’s American…
BY HANK REICHMAN In case you missed it (I had!) check out this great reggae tribute to teachers’ strikes by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul (that’s Steve Van Zandt of E Street Band and Wire fame), featuring Diane Ravitch. Last Fall Van Zandt began a Teacher Solidarity Tour, which will, I hope, continue…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, upholding the right of students to wear black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War. The Tinker case established a standard of “substantial disruption” for punishing K-12 students, and it is a landmark case for student…
BY HANK REICHMAN “The educational reform landscape is littered with theories about what’s needed to improve low-performing schools. The Finnish model. The South Korean model. More money with more restrictions. More money with fewer restrictions. The answers are seldom so simple.” Those wise words come from a January 2017 Los Angeles Times editorial responding to…