Bob Shepherd is a polymath, a man of remarkable learning, an author, a scholar, and at the capstone of his career, a classroom teacher.
Regular readers of this blog know him as a frequent contributor and a source of wisdom and humor.
Here is his review of my new book, SLAYING GOLIATH: THE PASSIONATE RESISTAMCE TO PRIVATIZATION AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS, which will be released on January 21 by Alfred A. Knopf, one of the nation’s finest trade publishers.
He begins:
In these dark days of Trumpism, reasons for optimism are the spar to which the rest of us, the passengers on the now disastrously helmed ship of state, attempt to cling. Diane Ravitch’s new book, Slaying Goliath is such a spar. It’s a celebration of those who have pushed back against the oligarch-led disruption and attempted privatization of our preK-12 educational system. But it’s more than just a lot of cheering stories (though it is that, and we need those; reading this, you will find yourself cheering again and again). It’s also, effectively, a manual for the Resistance, a how-to book detailing a way forward not only for parents and teachers but for workers generally (and so, like classrooms themselves, it has profound import beyond the classroom)….
Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Silent Spring, Slaying Goliath is one of those books that can make important change happen. Tremble, oligarchs, for our Jeanne d’Arc, our Boadicea, our David is in the field, and millions are ranged behind her, not many millions of Gates or Koch or Walton dollars, mind you, but millions of teachers and students and parents and others who care about public schools and other democratic institutions. As Ravitch explains in this book, education disruption and deformation (so-called “Reform”) is not a real movement. It depends entirely on paid, Vichy collaborators with a handful of profiteering oligarchs in the Billionaire Boys and Girls’ Club. But that makes it all the more insidious, pernicious, dangerous.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
in think tanks where thinking tanks
Bob… You are a gem. We need your voice and wit too.
Thanks for the review.
That’s good enough for me. I gotta buy the book. 😄
cx: the word in the first line should be spars, ofc, not spar. Plural. I used to tell my students, good writing is rewriting. I never reread my own scribbling without having corrections to make. Writing is a humbling business.
Which is one reason to do it! There is what Yeats called “The Fascination of What’s Difficult.”
Clinging to the spar
Were clinging to the mast
As ship is tossed about
We pray it doesn’t last
But minds are full of doubt
The gale is blowing hard
And waves are breaking o er
The storm has dealt a card
To sink us to the floor
But gales, they do not last
And stormy skies, they clear
And just like in the past
Our ship will still be here
We’re clinging to the mast
Nice! You anthologies are wonderful, SomeDAM. And it’s great to see from you work from you, as well, not in that satirical vein. Do you write any short fiction?
Yikes, what a mess I made of that last comment. Sorry. Great work, SomeDAM, and thanks.
Nice review. Well said. I’m looking forward to reading Diane’s book. It’s always wonderful to get something good in the mail when I trudge in the door on one of these dark, winter evenings after a very, very tiring day at work.
As your write, Bob, these are dark days right now in our country, They only make the winter nights seem that much longer.
Let’s hope Diane’s book is a harbinger for all us of better times to come in 2020.
The End of Darkness
The darkest time:
Before the dawn
The Sun will shine
Upon the lawn
The clouds will part
The fog will clear
The darkest heart
Will not be near
I like the lawn part.
If only I could use my lawn mower and/or weed wacker to hack away the poison ivy-like tendrils of the school rephormy (bowel) movement.
Calls to mind the time I had a septic tank/drainfield disaster in my backyard -which I temporarily fixed (no fooling) with duct tape and a length of old pvc pipe. I sat out on the clean part of the lawn under a beautiful blue, May sky looking at the mess I’d just climbed out of thinking, wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this..
Teaching has taught me to be very creative when it comes to stressful situations. Yeah, Like when the nation craps on its public schools and our children.
Take care.
John
Funny story (after the fact, of course), especially about the duct tape.
When I first moved to Utah, I lived in a trailer that was literally held together with the stuff.
Any time we had a problem, the landlord would come over with a roll of duct tape and no other tools.
It was hilarious. I have often wondered how many rolls he had used.
That’s not to say I don’t use the stuff myself in a pinch.
My wonderful grandmother deployed scotch tape to fix tons of things you’d never think of using it on. I was just talking yesterday about how her broken refrigerator door had, like, a half inch thick mound of “cellophane tape” as she called it holding it together. I vividly recall looking at the repair in awe as a little kid. We still laugh about it. She must’ve used multiple rolls. This heap of tape was like the width of a dinner plate.
Recently I was fixing something around my own house with (you got it) scotch tape and I was making quite a mess of it. And, I’m like, damn!, look at me now. Necessity is still the (grand) mother of invention. She was right.
And, so much of what I do at school seems to consist of duct tape-sort of repairs, done on the fly. That mountain of yellowed, cellophane tape that was on my grandmother’s old refrigerator is a metaphor for what I have to do sometimes as a teacher. We make do with what we have -in a big old hurry.
What a way to run an airline, as they say.
John,
Boeing used Scotch tape too on its Max, to tragic effect.
Yes….and it’s also a metaphor for where our country is today.
Those Boeing e-mails that were published this past week were crazy. Talk about groupthink, sucking up to power, immorality and outright corruption. The public was ridiculed and endangered.
Who would’ve thought that cockamanie “common core” edu-babble phrase “building the plane while flying it” would end up also describing…the construction of a REAL PLANE!!
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/boeing-emails-show-workers-mocking-faa-ridiculing-737-maxs-safety-2020-01-09
I was just thinking the other day that public schools are sometimes like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The big difference is that old time coal companies tended to pay attention to the canaries. Kids and teachers on the other hand….well, we’re fodder to be experimented on.
Talk about demented and dangerous. It’s an upside-down world.
Yes, Boeing engineers knew and mocked the FAA and idiotic public who were stupid enough to think their plane was actually safe.
And since the crashes, Boeing management has been using duck tape to duck responsibility.
If I were the FAA, I would keep the MAx grounded until every part and every system has been fully tested by an independent group of competent engineers (unlike those who work at Boeing).
The problem at Boeing is not restricted to just the 737 MAX. The problem is a systemic lackadaisical attitude toward safety.
Their Dreamliner has been plagued with critical (life threatening) problems from day one and several employees and a former safety inspector who was fired by Boeing say the central issue is putting profits ahead of safety, which has resulted in shoddy workmanship , particularly at their North Carolina plant.
I won’t fly on either of those planes and have written to several of the airlines that use them to inform them that I won’t. In fact, I intend whenever possible to fly with airlines that don’t use Boeing planes. Frontier, for example, uses Airbus.
Make that Boeing’s South Carolina plant.