Gayle Greene, a professor of English at Scripps College in California, wrote this beautiful tribute to the meaning of the arts in her life. She reflects on her mother’s piano, the beautiful music that somehow inspired her own love of words and literature.
When you read about her mother’s piano, you will for a brief time be carried back to an era when education had nothing to do with data, metrics, test scores, and choice. Will the statisticians and economists, the standardizers and technocrats kill that era or do we have a chance to reclaim it from them?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Beautiful Article..Her following quote says it all…..
“But it’s harder these days, when education is all about information input and the arts
are dismissed as frills, when words are valued not for beauty but utility, for outcomes
measurable on exams.”
Gayle, they dismiss the arts and consider the students as products off an assembly line.
Students are no longer considered to have emotions and dreams..
They are led to believe that if they can pass a ridiculous test, they will have achieved success….This is so wrong.
Moms Mabley, a philsopher/comic, used to say “The good old days! I was there! Where were they!”
Choice in education has always been there for the wealthy and powerful. Always.
The question is what options will exist for low and moderate income families.
I find it thoroughly disgusting that someone would see this post as a segue for pushing their “choice” agenda.
You act as if choice is always good, like the corporate sponsored “reformers” who would like us to believe that the free-market is always good, when that’s what tanked our economy.
Where I live, many low and moderate income parents do not want the “choice” given by the privatization of public education. They rally against the closing of their neighborhood schools and the denial of their democratic rights to vote for elected school councils and/or elected school boards. A lot of parents do not want their schools closed for the trade off of the “choice” to send their kids to unregulated charter schools, many of which are for-profit or implement military style schooling, and lack elected parent representatives. They don’t want to be forced into shopping for schools.
No, just like the free-market, choice is not always a good thing. Remember Sophie? No one wants that kind of “choice” foisted upon them.
Chi-town, I agree that school choice is not always good. I agree that the free market has problems.
What I’m reacting to is this assertion, “you will for a brief time be carried back to an era when education had nothing to do with data, metrics, test scores, and choice.”
Wealthy, advantaged families always have had educational choices in this country. There never was a time in this country when they didn’t.
I grew up during the time that Diane was referring to and understand exactly what she meant. My upper-middle income family and many of our neighbors chose to send their kids to public schools even though they could afford to pay for private schools. Our maid (of color) chose to send her kids to parochial schools. When this country had more of a middle class, a larger number of people had more choices, not just the wealthy. But never before this era did choice mean being robbed of the ability to choose a neighborhood school –and that’s disgraceful.
Actually, African American families were not permitted for years in some parts of the country to send their children to neighborhood schools” – they were forced to send their children miles from home to the designated school for their children.
Some southern states also used “choice” to allow white families to “opt out” of public schools – a very sad chapter in the nation’s history.
I was responding to the following assertion that there was a time when “education had nothing to do with data, metrics, test scores, and choice.”
Wealthy (mostly white) families always have had choices, going back to the beginning of the country.
We’re now in a situation where people of color can, in many states, create the public schools they think make sense.
Joe Nathan, you are truly Joe One Note. You say the same thing over and over and never tire of explaining that segregated charter schools are a wonderful innovation. Or that anything charters do is wonderful. or that if a charter operator stole $2 million, you know of a public school principal who stole $2,000. You know every possible excuse for charters.your faith is touching. If there were an award for persistence and indefatigability, you would get it.
What looks like segregation to some wealthy, influential white people looks like empowerment to some African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans.
But just to be clear, I’ve posted on a variety of topics, including but not limited to the value of helping low income students take courses that allow them to earn high school and college credit, problems with certain kinds of school choice, the frustration that some innovative educators face in dealing with bureaucracy, and the views of Horace Mann (just to name a few).
Several of us also had a nice conversation over the weekend about what and how to counsel a high school student who in the opinion of a college prof, is unwisely trying to take a college level class.
There never was a time when the wealthy didn’t have the choice of their neighborhood public schools, too. However, with corporate “reformers” planning to use the Common Core assessments to prove to suburban parents that their schools are bad, in order to pave the way for privatization there as well, just like many urban families today, they are likely to lose their choice of neighborhood schools soon, too: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/11/30/rick-hesss-startling-analysis-of-common-core/
I don’t need a history lesson. I spent a lot of time in the south; my mother was a civil rights worker who fought against Jim Crow and I personally experienced what that was like. However, I grew up in the north and integration was never illegal here.
Oh, please. Entrepreneurs can create the schools they want. Regular people are just trying to hang on to their neighborhood schools so their kids don’t have to cross gang turf to get to a public school or attend a military style charter school across town.
Wow. So now we are supposed to believe that segregation looks empowering to minorities, contrary to how “wealthy influential white people” see it, because he (another white guy) claims otherwise. And how many of those minority kids are actually being taught by minimally trained, inexperienced, “wealthy influential white people” a la Teach for America, too? Right, so now empowerment means having rich white teachers make minority kids learn to comply in military style schools.
I don’t think so. I’m much more likely to go with Brown v. Board of Ed that “separate is not equal”. Diane is so right. Joe will do and say virtually anything to push charter schools and try to make how segregated they are sound appealing.
Actually, I was quoting the first African American to be elected to the St. Paul, Mn City Council, the first to be elected Council President, and a man who was appointed Mn Commissioner of Human Rights. He was a victim while a child of being forced to go many miles from home to the designed school for African Americans.
http://www.minnpost.com/learning-curve/2013/01/culture-conscious-higher-ground-academy-serves-largely-east-african-student-b
How do you feel about universities like Howard, Morehouse…and other historically African American colleges where many of the nation’s leaders (including Dr. King) attended. Would you wipe them out too?
That’s your connection to this beautiful story of her childhood. I’m glad you’re not teaching children…..they would be bored out of their minds hearing the same self promoting message over and over and over again. Geez…give it a rest.
Allow me to speak for the non-reform-driven statisticians when I say that honest, well-trained statisticians know the limits and potential abuses of numbers. We are careful to highlight study limitations, and we realize the importance of the practical when interpreting the numeric. We realize the oft-intimidating power inherent in wielding numbers, and we seek to guide readers in understanding, not to beat them with some ivory-tower “superiority” via truth-concealing and outright lies.
Mercedes,
Cut it out, they’re going to kick you out of the statisticians association!
M. Schneider: honorable words have a poetic quality.
Your posting has both power and beauty in it. Thank you for sharing it with us.
🙂