When we stop stealing dreams, what do we do instead?
Editor’s note: My friend Penelope Trunk did a provocative review of Seth Godin’s new book, “Stop Stealing Dreams” where she calls him out on his ideas about education reform and homeschooling. The following post is my comment on her blog. You can read her response here.
Seth Godin does a good job of pointing out many of the flaws with institutionalized, compulsory schooling, but he does little to move the conversation toward a vision of what a school should or could look like today. It’s ironic, for example, that he picks Harlem Village Academies as a beacon of what a “good school” is. Despite Godin’s criticism of standardization rather than customization, and his disdain for testing, he highlights a school that has an “About me” page that celebrates students standardized test scores!
Why isn’t Godin pointing to models that solve the issues he addresses but our government refuses to fund for those who choose public school? The answers already exists with places like Democratic Schools, North Star Teens, Nuestra Escuela, Raw Learning or models like Schoolwide Enrichment that are being pushed aside by our multi-billion dollar testing industry. The fact that Godin comes out against home education spewing mainstream myths and misconceptions was also disappointing.