My new book SLAYING GOLIATH was launched in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on January 21. It was a delightful event, with Carol Burris and I discussing the book, talking about the national picture, and explaining the role of the Network for Public Education in pushing back against the Billionaire Combine. It was a lively and engaged crowd, including Lisa Rudley of New York State Allies for Public Education, one of the heroes of my book.
On Friday, Mary and I flew to Fort Lauderdale, where one of my nephews was getting married. It was a good time to catch up with family whom I don’t see often and to eat vast quantities of food (blowing away one of my New Year’s resolutions).
After the wedding festivities concluded, we moved to the apartment of New York friends who spend every winter in Fort Lauderdale.
Monday night was an event at one of America’s best independent bookstores: Books and Books in Coral Gables. And what a bookstore it is! I’m glad I got there early, with time to browse the shelves of this beautiful store, which has a vast supply of unusual books of literature and history. I could have spent hours there.
I met the owner, Mitchel Kaplan, who graduated from Miami public schools, spent three years as a high schoolEnglish teacher, then opened Books and Books. We did a podcast, and he was wonderfully enthusiastic about the book and had read it carefully (I have been interviewed in the past by people who had read nothing but the flap copy). After our conversation, which I will post here in a few days, we talked about our families and discovered that our grandparents came from the same place in Poland, called LOMZA (NOT Lombardi). My paternal grandparents emigrated in the 19th Century. His came to the U.S. at the end of World War 1. All the Jews of LOMZA were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
After the podcast, I hurried to a gathering of the leadership of United Teachers of Dade County at a nearby restaurant. Their president, Karla Hernandez Mats, is a very impressive, dynamic leader. She is also beautiful and enthusiastic. I couldn’t help but notice that she had a copy of the galleys of my book, filled with post-its. She read it!
We all went to the bookstore, which had a packed house, about 250 people, many of them teachers. Karla and I had a public discussion. I love this format. She raised the questions most important to Dade County, and I responded, riffing off into whatever else occurred to me.
The audience asked questions. Towards the end, a woman rose to speak and said ominously that all the schools in America were teaching Satanism, and they had to be stopped. She would have gone on and on, but I was able to pause her and told her I had visited many schools but had never seen any that taught Satanism.
A few more questions, and I started signing books. The line was long, and near the end, I realized I had to take a bathroom break, and I excused myself. I rushed to the WC, where I proceeded to drop my cell phone in the toilet (clean water) but it miraculously survived the ordeal. (A few years ago, my cell melted down after getting one drip of water on it at the bottom of my handbag…so, progress).
The evening over, I hugged my new lontzman, Mitchel Kaplan, and went with my friends back to Fort Lauderdale, an hour’s drive. This morning, off to DC. I will speak at Politics and Prose tomorrow night.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You ROCK, Diane. Thank you for all that you do. I read your blog daily.
Take care.
Yes, agree! Thank you Diane for all your incredible efforts in the service of our public schools system. You are making a difference for the real public schools. It must have been a little jarring to hear that comment from the woman who claimed that all the schools are teaching satanism! Now teachers are satanists?
Florida teachers take a lot of abuse for meager pay. Their State Commissioner, not an educator but former speaker of the House, declared that all students should be voucherized. His wife runs a charter.
In an NPR interview, I said Florida was noted for its greedy and corrupt Legislature. I forget whether I mentioned Arizona in the same breath.
I’ve heard some Southerners claim that the public schools are trying to turn children into liberals or even communists, but never satanists. As Buffalo Springfield once said, “Paranoia runs deep,” especially in the deep South.
What does the Massachusetts Catholic Conference claim, at its site, that public schools are dong?
Embedded I this discussion is the excellence of independent book stores. There is a lot of discussion about competition as a motivator of good schools among those who feel that the public sector needs to be abolished in favor of the wonders of competition. The rise of independent book stores from the ashes of Amazon points out what would happen if the disruptors succeeded in their desires the way Barnes and Noble, Books-a-million, and then Amazon succeeded in running the little guys out of all the towns.
If you tore down the public schools completely, they would spring up from the rocks like the independent bookstores have begun to do. You would first read of an innovative approach to the educational problems: this county in Unamit, Iowa where the local people had banded together to buy all the charter schools in their area and make a school that was run by local community people. They would be famous for their high test scores or some other random way to look at school success. Soon money would be coming I from philanthropists who wanted in on the new rage, the public school. It would be back to the future.
Let’s hear it for public schools and independent bookstores. Keep the former, bring back the latter.
Looking for your book at Hudson News at the airports this weekend.
As in the past, nada. What’s their connection with who that they don’t/won’t carry your books–?
My opinion- The problem is likely that the book has been classified in the education topic sector. It should be in the investigative journalism topic area where it would get better promotion to a general audience. If a companion piece exposed the political involvement of USCCB and state Catholic Conferences, it would deliver the knowledge Americans in a democracy, deserve.
I am reading your latest now, and will pitch it at my next school board meeting. It’s excellent. Every school board member in America should read it!
Cindy Watter,
There’s an old saying: From your mouth to God’s ears.
I love the way you describe your experience. You are a born story-teller, and It lets us see your experience. You make my day!