University of Georgia professor and frequent AJC Get Schooled contributor Peter Smagorinsky discusses an interesting new book exposing the misperceptions and distortions about America's schools. By Peter Smagorinsky
A years back there was a public service ad on TV that featured a teenaged boy discussing a major event of the day with his friends. He made his points convincingly because he understood the issues better than they did. At the end of the ad, he turned away, and the camera focused on his back pocket, in which he carried a book. The ad implicitly conveyed Thomas Jefferson’s belief that “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”
I loved that ad.
If I were to pick one book that people should have in their back pockets when talking about education, it’d be 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten American’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education by David C. Berliner and Gene V. Glass.
Berliner has, for decades, provided counter-arguments to deceits designed to undermine public education, including his coauthored 1995 book The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And the Attack on America's Public Schools, written to counter the politicized rhetoric of decline surrounding the schools of two decades ago.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: The more things change, the more they remain the same.
My goal here is not to provide a comprehensive summary or review of
50 Myths & Lies;
there’s one here if that’s what you’re looking for. Rather, in this brief space, I’ll provide a sample of what the authors achieve in this highly readable volume.
Berliner and Glass systematically dismantle a range of bogus beliefs surrounding schools, exposing the deceptions that have served to construct an image of education quite different from its realities. They do use test data to buttress claims, such as their conclusion that when factors such as poverty are controlled for, U.S. students’ test scores rank fairly high in international comparisons.
