Corporate-Driven Report Exemplifies Failed Thinking on US Education

[marmar]

Published on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 by The Washington Post

Corporate-Driven Report Exemplifies Failed Thinking on US Education
Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk’

by Valerie Strauss


A new report being officially released today — by a Council of Foreign Relations task force chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice — seems to want very much to be seen as the new “A Nation at Risk,” the seminal 1983 report that warned that America’s future was threatened by a “rising tide of mediocrity” in the country’s public schools.

It’s a pale imitation.

The U.S. Education Reform and National Security report, to be sure, has some similar language and themes of a Nation at Risk. It says (over and over) that America’s national security is threatened because America’s public schools aren’t adequately preparing young people to “fill the ranks of the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces” (or diplomats, spies and soldiers).

But it takes a very different view of the public education system than the authors of “A Nation at Risk,” who sought to find ways to improve public schools and treat the system as a civic institution. The new report seems to look at public schools as if they are the bad guys that need to be put out of business, with a new business taking over, funded with public dollars. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/20-7

[Downwinder]

1. How to fix the schools.

Cut their budgets.

[saras]

2. It appears that they want even stupider students, not smarter ones...

"fill the ranks of the Foreign Service, the intelligence community, and the armed forces"

The problem with public schools is that they educate too well, and produce adults that can't be suckered into the kind of beliefs you have to hold in order to be a good servant of empire.