I enjoy give and take with people who disagree. I have always believed in freedom to speak, freedom to disagree, freedom to teach and freedom to learn.
I block three kinds of things on Twitter:
1) porn
2) ads
3) insults
I believe it is possible to have a discussion without insulting the other person. I don’t do it (I try not to, anyway), and I won’t stand for others insulting me. Well, I can’t stop them but I don’t have to listen to insults. That wastes too much of whatever time I have left on this earth.
The other thing you should know is that I have reached this very wonderful time in my life where I am of an age (nearly 74) where I feel free to express my views without worrying if everyone will approve. I don’t want a job, I can’t be fired, I don’t want a grant.
I have spent forty years studying and writing about education. I know a lot of things because I lived through them. I want to share what I know. If I am wrong, I’m sure that people will correct me and I’ll correct myself.
So please feel free to tell me that I’m wrong, if you think so. But be civil. As I try to be.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, while I applaud your efforts in education, resisting troubling aspects of education reform movement, I’m puzzled by this. I just finished reading an earlier post of yours in which you malign Michelle Rhee? It’s not an “insult” to question her prioritizing of collecting millions while neglecting students? “She looks for applause by bashing teachers.” This doesn’t exaggerate her view on teachers? Perhaps you could understand how someone might find your request for civility to be a little hollow.
I did not malign Michelle Rhee. I described her language during a panel discussion on Martha’s Vineyard last summer. Her applause lines were canned rhetoric about “bad teachers.” Her performance was designed to elicit laughter at the expense of teachers.
Diane
Stephen, there is a difference between insulting someone, and simply pointing out facts. Michelle Rhee has, indeed, raised millions while marginalizing teachers, and neglecting students. This has actually happened — and pointing this out is, indeed the civil thing to do. Because if we don’t point out gross injustice, how can we possibly act in the name of fairness? We don’t do children favors by beating around the bush. Rhee’s power and influence is real, and the damage she’s caused has seriously set back American public education.
Diane, there’s a fine line between “pointing out facts” in some dispassionate, objective way, and maligning someone. On which side do you come out on this post? Well, your rhetorical question “How does she sleep at night?” is transparently a moral condemnation. You begin by pointing out her taking millions from greedy profiteers, and it’s not a stretch in this age of political and financial corruption to besmirch someone by revealing connections with corporations. She’s taking their money, how could she be anything but a self-interested, greedy capitalist, uninterested in students?!
You then attack her credibility (your word), and suggest a willful negligence (she could have chosen to improve education for students and their teachers and chose not to).
Look, we can agree to disagree. Maybe you’re not morally condemning her (and thus maligning her). I think you clearly are. And that’s actually ok, in my book. But to then demand “civility” is a little incongruous.
I find this Jon Stewart bit comical! I hope you do as well ….
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-12-2012/civil-disservice
Stephen,
Michelle Rhee has created an organization whose purpose is to claim that teachers and students are on opposite sides of the fence. She has raised many millions of dollars–maybe hundreds of millions of dollars–maybe a billion dollars so that she can fund political campaigns to roll back teachers’ collective bargaining rights, to eliminate their tenure and seniority. to remove any job protections they now have. Because of her, many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of teachers will retire to lives of penury, as she collects millions. She has allied herself with the most reactionary governors in the nation, as well as a large number of billionaires who think that teachers make too much money and have an easy job.
I find this whole enterprise of hers to be morally and ethically repugnant. I don’t know how she can sleep at night, knowing that teachers across America are losing status and income and the right to due process because of her efforts.
That’s my view.
You don’t agree. You are entitled to your view.
Diane
Actually, Diane, I don’t disagree with your estimation of Rhee. THAT’S not my point at all. My point is that your moral critique is incongruent with your call for civility. What if someone were to offer an equally severe critique of Randi Weingarten, arguing that she and her union cronies are more interested in their own power and pocket (and those of their union members) than they are their students. Would you not think such a post amounts to an aspersion against Weingarten? Would you describe such posts as civil? The idea that you’re just presenting the facts in a dispassionate, objective way is just naive. Again, the reason for my initial comment has nothing to do with Rhee, nor with your assessment of her work. It’s with the incongruence between your passionate condemnation of her competence, her commitments, and her approach, and your call for civility. Ok, I’m done.
Stephen,
People may say negative things about any public figure, true or false, grounded in evidence or not. But I am making a different point, and that is about how one chooses to use one’s life and for what purposes.
I find it morally and ethically reprehensible to raise millions of dollars to impoverish teachers. I couldn’t sleep at night if I thought that my advocacy caused thousands of other people to be fired or to live in straitened circumstances or to live in fear or to quit teaching because of something I had done to them. The fact that so many billionaires and hedge fund managers are contributing to the attacks on teachers just makes it that much more unseemly. I want to leave this world thinking that I have helped people, not thinking that I have knowingly done harm. Maybe that’s naive but that’s what I believe.
Diane
I also think that what is meant is in reference to the “Comments” section of the blog. I regularly read “Bridging Differences” & Valerie Strauss’ “The Answer Sheet,” & it is tiring/time-wasting to read all the insults about writers’ spelling & grammar (“I hope you are not an English teacher…” )& on & on, back & forth, until the dialogue loses meaning as to the importance of the post & ensuing communication. Of course, people can agree to disagree: ideas are born from this.
Thanks, Diane, for encouraging a forum of civility.
What’s that saying? “Let’ agree to disagree.”