Daily Kos: Systemic Poverty, the Psychology of Poverty, and Misleading Binaries:
FRI JUN 15, 2012 AT 06:52 AM PDT
Recently, I examined the
importance of tone in the education reform debate. Here, I turn more directly to the substance of that debate, although I increasingly find it difficult to separate fully substance from tone.
Two binaries have been expressed that serve as clear windows into both that substance and tone:
Paul Bruno's claim that the education reform debate is failing because "reformers" and "anti-reformers" are underestimating out-of-school factors ("reformers") and in-school influence ("anti-reformers") and
Wendy Kopp's argument that Teacher for America (TFA) represents the "builders" and TFA's detractors are "haters."
If tone matters, and I believe it does, let's start by noting that Bruno and Kopp position the so-called "reformers" and "builders" with positive (and misleading) labels while marginalizing "anti-reformers" and "haters/naysayers" with negative and pejorative (and inaccurate) terms.
Next,
I have offered that the education reform debate is best characterized as a struggle