Stalinizing American Education
by Lawrence Baines — September 16, 2011
The similarities between contemporary American educational reform and Soviet educational reform of the 1930s are as striking as they are discomfiting.
Of the following three statements, which refer to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and which refer to America today?
1. “Teachers are asked to achieve significant academic growth for all students at the same time that they instruct students with ever-more diverse needs….The stakes are huge—and the time to cling to the status quo has passed.”
2. “We had to have a campaign for 100 percent successful teaching…all students must learn.”
3. “Poor work by the school and poor achievement by the entire class and by individual pupils are the direct result of poor work by the teacher.”
Although all three of the above sentiments could be attributable to current officeholders in Washington, D.C., only the first is American—from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Duncan 2010,
