Education First Principles
Shawn Gude has a terrific post up at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Much of it is an examination of my “shifting rhetoric” on education reform.
On the whole, Kain’s rhetorical shift is salutary stuff. If you follow the education reform debates, you know it has gotten super polarized — you’re either a recalcitrant mossback in the tank for teachers unions or a harebrained reactionary out to destroy public education. When blinkered dogmatism and hyperbolic rhetoric supplant reasoned rumination, impoverished debate ensues. In this type of environment, incredulity, nuance-adding, and elevating the level of discourse (as Kain has done) are all good things.
With that said, I think some reformers do want to fundamentally alter the education system in ways I find repugnant. And you have people like Jonathan Alter—who has openly said “I loathe the teacher’s unions”—calling the education reform movement “the most significant social movement of our time.” It shouldn’t come as a shock that many on the left are incensed. The lines have been drawn, and unions are seeing their biggest adversaries as an existential threat. The perception of existential threats prompts overheated rhetoric.To be fair, most reformers don’t want to deracinate