Education Reform: Tragedy and Farce
Who has spent a good portion of their childhood in a classroom and been able to shake the queasy feeling that comes from reading Charles Dickens’ introduction of Sir Thomas Gradgrind in his novel “Hard Times”? The name Gradgrind says it all, the perfect stern, lifeless image bored kids visualize about their teachers. Here is how Dickens describes the dreary ultra-rationalist utilitarian:
A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four and nothing over. Thomas Gradgrind, Sir- peremptorily Thomas- Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket. Sir, ready to weight and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, case of simple arithmetic.
It’s hard to fathom that the banal philosophy of such a universally mocked caricature from Victorian times would make a strong resurgence over a century later. Yet just like neoliberalism, another Victorian leftover, this ideological brand has achieved bi-partisan support, near pundit consensus, and billionaire backing. Substitute test scores for ‘facts’ and Bill Gates or Joel Klein for Gradgrind and we have an almost perfect match for what passes for educational philosophy and reform these days.
It was Joel Klein, former schools chancellor of New York City credited with implementing major changes such as
Pre-Employment Background Screening
If You Want to Understand What’s Really Going on in the World, Stop Thinking Like a Middle Class American
I was having a conversation with a professional colleague the other day who had spent some time working in Egypt and was reassigned back home shortly before the protests erupted that resulted in the abrupt departure from power of Hosni Mubarak. We started talking about the state of the economy, and I mentioned how the reckless policies of the Federal Reserve, engaging in Quantitative Easing and setting interests rates near 0%, were a primary factor leading to Mubarak’s ouster and the civil unrest that has been spreading across the Middle East. My colleague, who spent a year in Cairo and presumably would have seen the conditions there first hand,