Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“
Bob Shepherd has worked as an editor, author, assessment developer, curriculum writer, and most recently a classroom teacher in Florida.
In this post, he reviews the review of my book SLAYING GOLIATH, which was written by journalist Annie Murphy Paul and published in the New York Times Book Review.
To summarize, he thought the review was uninformed and mean-spirited.
He writes:
On January 21, 2020, Annie Murphy Paul’s “review” of Diane Ravitch’s Slaying Goliathappeared in The New York Times. Being reviewed in the Times is a big deal. Such a review affects public opinion and sales. That’s why a hatchet job done on a truly important book is truly irresponsible.
In her new book, education historian Ravitch presents a recent history of the popular resistance to an “Education Reform Movement” led by billionaires interested in
- privatizing U.S. PreK-12 education via charter schools and vouchers,
- foisting upon the country a single set of national “standards,”
- busting teachers’ unions,
- selling depersonalized education software, and
- evaluating students, teachers, and schools based on high-stakes standardized tests.
Here’s Ms. Paul’s opening salvo:
“She came. She saw. She conquered.”
This opening is, of course, an allusion to the boast about his role in the Gallic Wars attributed to Julius Caesar by Appian, Plutarch, and Suetonius—Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). Caesar’s is doubtless the most famous boast in Western history, and the allusion is meant to be deflating. Technically, the term for what Ms. Paul is attempting here is bathos, a powerful rhetorical technique in which one plunges from the sublime into the ridiculous. She means to ridicule Ravitch as someone who sees herself as the great conqueror of the “Reform CONTINUE READING: Bob Shepherd Reviews Annie Murphy Paul’s Review of SLAYING GOLIATH in the “New York Times“ | Diane Ravitch's blog