Jan Resseger received an early copy of a new book edited by David Berliner and Carl Hermanns (I contributed one of the essays), and she was delighted to discover that the volume contains what must have been one of Mike Rose’s last essays before his untimely death last summer.
She writes:
I just received my pre-ordered copy of a fine new collection of essays from Teachers College Press. In Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, editors David Berliner and Carl Hermanns pull together reflections by 29 writers, who, as the editors declare: “create a vivid and complex portrait of public education in these United States.”
It seems especially appropriate at the end of 2021 to consider one of the essays included in this new book—probably Mike Rose’s final essay—“Reflections on the Public School and the Social Fabric.” Rose, the wonderful writer and UCLA professor of education, died unexpectedly in August.
Rose considers the many possible lenses through which a public can consider and evaluate its public schools: “Public schools are governmental and legal institutions and therefore originate in legislation and foundational documents… All institutions are created for a reason, have a purpose, are goal driven… Equally important as the content of curriculum are the underlying institutional assumptions about ability, knowledge, and the social order… Public schools are physical structures. Each has an address, sits on a parcel of land with geographical coordinates… By virtue of its location in a community, the school is embedded in the social and economic dynamics of that community… The school is a multidimensional social system rich in human interaction… With the increasing application of technocratic frameworks to social and institutional life, it becomes feasible to view schools as quantifiable systems, represented by numbers, tallies, metrics. Some school phenomena lend themselves to counting, though counting alone won’t capture their meaning… And schools can be thought of as part of the social fabric of a community, serving civic and social needs: providing venues for public meetings and political debate, polls, festivities, and during crises shelters, distribution hubs, sites of comfort.”
Please open the link and read on!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The title of Rose’s landmark book, Possible Lives, aptly describes what public schools mean to students and their communities. Public schools are about possibilities for young people, their communities and the nation in which they live. Public schools and the education they provide helped build our nation, and we must defend and protect them so that succeeding generations of young people can benefit from an authentic public education, instead of some billionaire’s idea of what young people should get as a substitute for a real human engagement that can unleash human potential. We must not take public education for granted as influential privatizers seek to turn our public asset into a cheap commodity.
a commodity actually trading in some markets: imagine what that says about kids as the numbers go up and down
Well said, RT!
Highly recommended: The hilarious satire Don’t Look Up, with Meryl Streep playing Donald Trump, and all-star cast, and lots and lots of Deplorables.
cx: an all-star cast
Saw it tonight. It’s both hilarious and terrifying. It cuts very close to real life.
As insane as it is, it does.
800,000 Americans dead because of this denialism–denialism about the dangers of the disease, about social distancing, about masks, about the putting children in tiny, enclosed spaces during an airborne pandemic and making of them vectors for disease into their families and communities. Stop it. Please. Just freaking stop it.
The epidemics of depression and suicide among American youth have a lot more to do with social media, the trivialization of school by Deformers, and the fighting among those who should be their models, based, on one side, in fact-free denialism that provided them with unclear models.
And the denialism that the Orange One taught his supporters continues to this day, taking an enormous toll across the country. I live in Flor-uh-duh, where this current is strong and our hospitals are overwhelmed with new cases of the Omicron variant. We are lucky indeed that this one is not worse than the others.
But the disease of denialism is in full force. Don’t look up.
Denialism and magical thinking.
Coffee grows on the white oak trees,
and the river runs with brandy.
–“Shady Grove”
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
–“Big Rock Candy Mountain”
“And wishes were horses, poor men would ride.” [trans.]
–James Carmichael, Proverbs in Scots, 1628
etc.
I won’t stop commenting on what’s been and continues to be inflicted on children.
If it’s too much to bear, then people can look away.
https://abc7.com/covid-in-kids-vaccine-omicron-variant-children-with/11393077/
Bob, not a day goes by that this scene is not running through my head…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRVfGMjdGh8
Yes, altogether appropriate. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. More of the latter, I think.
@Bob — Not a day goes by that this scene doesn’t ruminate through my mind…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRVfGMjdGh8