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Sunday, December 27, 2020

Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog
Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters




Wendy Lecker is a civil rights attorney who writes frequently for the Stamford Advocate. In this column, she reviews two important books: One shows how deeply embedded public schools are in our democratic ideology, the other describes that coordinated assault on the very concept of public schooling. The first is low professor Derek Black’s Schoolhouse Burning, the other is A Wolf at the Schoollhouse Door, by journalist Jennifer Berkshire and historian Jack Schneider.

Lecker writes:

In his scrupulously researched book, Derek Black emphasizes that the recognition that education is essential to democracy predated public schools and even the U.S. Constitution. He describes how the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, which applied to 31 future states, mandated funding and land for public schools, declaring that education was “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” Education was not explicitly included in the U.S. Constitution. However, after the Civil War, the United States required Southern states guarantee a right to education in their state constitutions as a condition for readmission. Northern states followed suit. State education articles CONTINUE READING: Wendy Lecker: Two Books That Demonstrate Why Public Education Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog