ALL CHILDREN MUST “WIN THE FUTURE”
THEMES IN THE NEWS FOR THE WEEK OF JAN. 24-28, 2011 BY UCLA IDEA | HTTP://BIT.LY/FNE43D
1-28-2011 In his State of the Union address (full text), President Obama spoke at some length about education. It was one of the few elements of the speech that received enthusiastic support from both Republicans and Democrats (Education Week, Educated Guess, Education Week).
The speech portrayed a foreboding educational crisis that the administration is addressing with productive education policies. Inevitably, there are points of tension and contradiction in such a portrayal: a crisis that is serious enough to mobilize interest and force action accompanied by solutions that provide comfort and hope in the face of education failure.
For example, the president represented open-ended and critical questions as strengths of American education. He said, “. . . our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like ‘What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?’” In fact, many