The One-Sided Culture War Against Children Left and right unite against ‘kids who want it all’

[G_j]

http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=dbal%2FG66rCxFMF6sY1lxZKuU6mOt2KBH

BOOK EXCERPT

Have a look at the unsigned editorials in left-of-center newspapers, or essays by columnists whose politics are mostly progressive. Listen to speeches by liberal public officials. On any of the controversial issues of our day, from tax policy to civil rights, you’ll find approximately what you’d expect.

But when it comes to schooling and education, almost all of them take a hard-line position very much like what we hear from conservatives. In education, they endorse a top-down, corporate-style version of school reform that includes prescriptive, one-size-fits-all teaching standards and curriculum mandates; weakened job protection for teachers; frequent standardized testing; and a reliance on rewards and punishments to raise scores on those tests and compel compliance on the part of teachers and students.

Admittedly, there is some disagreement about the proper role of the federal government in all of this—and also about the extent to which public schooling should be privatized—but otherwise, liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the New York Times and the Daily Oklahoman, sound the identical themes of “accountability,” “raising the bar” and “global competitiveness” (meaning that education is conceived primarily in economic terms). President Barack Obama didn’t just continue George W. Bush’s education policies; he intensified them, piling the harsh test-driven mandates of a program called “Race to the Top” on the harsh test-driven mandates of “No Child Left Behind.”

Applause for this agenda has come not only from corporate America but also from both sides of the aisle in Congress and every major media outlet in the United States. Indeed, the generic phrase "school reform" has come to be equated with these specific get-tough policies. To object to them is to risk being labeled a defender of the “status quo,” even though they have defined the status quo for some time now.

Many of the people who have objected are teachers and other education experts who see firsthand just how damaging this approach has been, particularly to low-income students and the schools that serve them. But a key element of “reform” is to define educators as part of the problem, so their viewpoint has mostly been dismissed.
What’s true of attitudes about education is also largely true of the way we think about children in general—what they’re like and how they should be raised. Of course, politicians are far less likely to speak (or newspapers to editorialize) about parenting. But columnists do weigh in from time to time and, when they do, those who are generally liberal—like the New York Times’ Frank Bruni, the Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh and the late William Raspberry of the Washington Post—once again do a remarkable imitation of conservatives. Articles about parenting in general-interest periodicals, meanwhile, reflect the same trend. The range of viewpoints on other topics gives way to a stunningly consistent perspective where children are concerned.

That perspective sounds something like this:

...more..

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[G_j]

2. --