Class Warfare—Over What?
by Diana SenechalAugust 17th, 2011
In a whopping 437 pages, Steven Brill’s Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools (Simon & Schuster, 2011) recounts a dramatic and vicious battle between two education camps: on the one side, hedge fund managers, aggressive chancellors, determined charter school leaders, teachers who work endlessly, all fighting for reform as they define it; on the other, the big unions who use their clout to block, complicate, or slow down reform. The book has good guys, bad guys, and a surprise twist. Yet it does not stop to consider what education is, what it contains, or what ends it serves. This weakness is not particular to Brill or his book; it is at the core of the battles he describes. But Brill takes part uncritically.
About a hundred pages into the book, Brill describes Anthony Lombardi, a tough-minded