On March 3rd, Diane Ravitch appeared on The Daily Show to promote her recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (a New York Times review is here). It’s a great episode, and worth watching (here if you live in the U.S., here if you live in Canada).
Ms. Ravitch discusses the damaging “No Child Left Behind” policy, which pours enormous amounts of time and resources to training students to pass standardized tests, leaving a lot less time and resources for actual learning. A few print items about her appearance are here (Washington Post), here (Washington Post), here (CNN), and here (The Daily Censored).
The show also had an ongoing report on the nonsense going on in Wisconsin, and the two issues were tied together quite neatly by Mr. Stewart. It’s shocking how many commentators out there (yes, Faux News was featured quite prominently) believe that teachers in the United States have cushy jobs and are overpaid, whereas it’s quite OK that the financial fools that just about brought down the world’s economy continue to get outrageous compensation, while their crimes against the American people go unpunished (see also David Olive).
Ms. Ravitch has been viciously attacked by Bill Gates (here‘s her response) and others, in a campaign that she says has been financed by Wall Street.
(This post first appeared at my other (now deleted) blog, and was transferred to this blog on 22 January 2021.)