I wrote this post while waiting to board my flight from Denver to Seattle. I forgot the link! No excuses! I also forgot to add that Leonie Haimson is a hero of public education, a woman who has repeatedly, courageously stood up to the rich and powerful on behalf of children. She was long ago added to the honor roll of this blog. She has advocated, litigated, testified, organized, written, researched, done whatever she could to defend the rights of children, and all without compensation. Her conscience is her guide.
Here is the original post, link added.
I have known Leonie HAimson for nearly 10 years. She is the most articulate, best informed, most relentless champion of children, families, and public schools that I know.
If the Gates-Murdoch data mining operation should fail nationally, Leonie did it. She has fought unceasingly for reduced class size, parent involvement, the reduction of high-stakes testing, and evidence-based policy. She does all this without any compensation.
In the fight to reclaim our public schools, she is a true hero. I do not use the word lightly.
Here is her review of “Reign of Error.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting comment to the review at her site:
“If the key problem is poverty, than, in this society with the greatest social inequality of any industrial country, what is needed is a government that would turn the banks into public utilities to use the resources created by the working class for the needs of people and to tax away the bank accounts of the super-rich. There is no section of the Democrats, let alone the Republicans that would do that. Neither will the unions, which are the prop of the Democratic Party. The working class needs to be united on its own agenda, that is a socialist program with its own party. I offer this perspective posted today: The “lost generation” and the failure of capitalism” — http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/18/pers-s18.html
This quote from the above linked article sums up what people like Diane Ravitch and books like hers can help accomplish:
“It is necessary for young people to make a serious study of the experiences through which they have passed and through which the working class as a whole has passed over the course of the 20th Century. Disappointment is increasingly turning into a more focused and determined opposition. This must be transformed into a conscious political struggle.
It is necessary to develop a probing critique of the existing society and draw the necessary political conclusions from this critique—that is, the need to build the revolutionary party of the working class to fight for [the author say the *S* word; but, fill in the word justice ]
Ah, the political realities in the minds of the leaders of the anti-reform movement are finally leaking out like the filling from a heated up prune jelly donut. Except it isn’t really prune whip but rather what it resembles, the s*** of Socialism. It always was the philosophy of the public schools, from Dewey on. It is the religion of the atheists, and, like all religions, based on a blind faith that the promises made will be kept by the universe.
I used to believe in college for all myself. I still haven’t quite emotionally given up that dream, delusion, fantasy. I keep thinking that rationality should be the salvation of society, and that equality in rationality should be achievable, since we are all homo sapiens aren’t we, with the same brains?
If that faith should turn out to be an illusion, then the question becomes NOT “How can we educate all students?” but “In a free and democratic society how do we identify the homo sapiens who are still unreasoning and incapable-of-reasoning beasts and then what do we rationals do with them?”
Or even more depressing, “What do the rationals do when the beasts have taken over the society” as I sometimes think has happened under this president.
I seem to begin to understand better the concept of Planet of the Apes.
With Leonie Haimson’s backing, I reiterate my 1 + 2 plan for REIGN OF ERROR: buy one copy for yourself and two copies for friends or colleagues or public officials.
I am already at 1 + 3. Soon, I think, to go to 1 + 4. Anyone else care to join me?
🙂
I have five and my autographed one coming soon. Passing out to teachers and administration throughout the year. 🙂
I have promised to pass my own copy to an administrator when I am finished with it. Also plan on ordering more for gifts to colleagues and friends. Hope to do a review for our union newsletter.
When J.K. Rowling was on a book tour for the release of one of her Harry Potter volumes, she was quoted as saying that she loved to autograph battered copies of her books because it showed that they had been read, reread, lent to others, and loved. Here’s hoping that there soon will be many many battered copies of Reign of Error out there.
Thank you Leonie and thank you Diane.