re: #126 wheat-dogg

All too true, and it’s been one of education’s greatest battles since the 1900s. Dewey and others saw education as a necessary part of a well-informed, well-rounded population, while the corporatists and politicians saw the public schools as training grounds for future factory workers who only needed the barest of skills. The other great battle is between the Constitutional secularism of the public schools and the Religious Right, who believe that the schools should also teach about GAWD and JAYSUS. Meanwhile, the core job of education — teaching children — gets lost in all the tussles over what to teach and how.

RWNJs hate Common Core, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate programs, because those pedagogical models teach students higher modes of thinking beyond rote memorization and adherence to authority. Oddly, their attitude toward education is remarkably close to that of Chinas’.

I’ve always defended public schools because they not private especially religious ones are what really built this country.