Laws

Education IS Democratic Engagement

Famously opposed educators come together:

"Our macro-level differences do not interfere with our mutual respect for each other’s work.
That itself is something we hope our schools can help teach young people.

Our differences helped us consider ways to rethink our ideas and find places where those holding different views might compromise, and perhaps learn to live under one umbrella.

What we hope to model is the idea of democratic engagement, the notion that citizens need to think about and debate their beliefs and values with others who do not necessarily share all of them.

We want the issues connected to schooling to be a matter for discussion among all people who care.

We don’t have it in our power to solve the problems that confront American education—not those that take place within the schoolhouse, much less those that have a direct impact on children’s ability to learn, such as their unequal access to health care, housing, and myriad other life necessities.

But we hope that we have it in our power to provoke the thinking that must precede, accompany, and follow any attempt to reform—perhaps, even better, to transform—our schools."


Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch May 24, 2006 commentary in EDUCATION WEEK


JJ Ross's picture

| | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Syndicate content

Visit our sponsors

Fill up our coffee fund

BlogAds

Visit our sponsors

Get our Digestifs du jour

Nibble daily on our brainy goodness with our daily syndication digest. You'll receive an email with a list and links to the previous day's posts.



Powered by FeedBlitz

culturekitchens

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers

Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network

BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.


Member's articles and stories

More stories

Poll

Who's online

There are currently 2 users and 1355 guests online.

Online users

Words to live by

What distinguished [Mr. McCain's] posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male.

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.


Subscribe Buttons

Feed IconGoogleDeliciousYahoo!BloglinesNewsgatorMSNFeedsterAOLFurlRojoNewsburstPluckFeedFeedsAdd KinjaMultiRSSrMailRSSFwdBlogarithmSimplify