We hear repeatedly about the shortage of qualified
engineers and the need for more science, technology, and
mathematics majors. I am all for that. I would also like to see
more majors in the arts, philosophy, history, government,
literature, and world languages. This reader–who signs as
“Democracy”–offers thoughts about “the STEM crisis”–and examines
the role of Lockheed Martin’s Norman Augustine, who has been
outspoken on this and other educational subjects. (See his defense
of standardized
testing here.). And more on “the STEM crisis” here.
But Augustine and the president of Cornell wrote an article
stressing the importance of the humanities and foreign languages
here,
while making a case for the Common Core. All seem to be about jobs
and national competitiveness, the aims of the day. . “Democracy”
writes: It seems that former Lockeed CEO Norm Augustine was invited
to tour Charlottesville-area public schools, where
he touted his brand of corporate “reform” and lauded
schools for their STEM (science, technology, engineering, math)
focus, which goes under the rubric of “21st-century education.” As
CEO at Martin Marietta, Augustine brokered the merger of that
company with Lockheed to produce Lockheed Martin and got taxpayers
to subsidize nearly a billion dollars of the merger cost, including
tens of millions in bonuses for executives (Augustine netted over
$8 million). And then the merged company laid off thousands of
workers. The promised efficiencies and cost savings to the
government (and taxpayers) have yet to materialize. Lockheed Martin
is is now the largest of the big defense contractors, yet its
government contracts are hardly limited to weapons systems. While
Lockheed has broadened its services, it is dependent on the
government and the taxpayers for its profits. It’s also #1 on the ”
‘contractor misconduct’ database” which tracks contract abuse and
misconduct. Meanwhile, while Norm Augustine touts the need for more
STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and STEM
teachers for public schools, Lockheed is laying off thousands of
engineers. Research studies show there is no STEM shortage, but
Augustine says (absurdly) that it’s critical to American economic
“competitiveness.” A 2004 RAND study “found no consistent and
convincing evidence that the federal government faces current or
impending shortages of STEM workers…there is little evidence of
such shortages in the past decade or on the horizon.” The RAND
study concluded “if the number of STEM positions or their
attractiveness is not also increasing” –– and both are not –– then
“measures to increase the number of STEM workers may create
surpluses, manifested in unemployment and underemployment.” A 2007
study by Lowell and Salzman found no STEM shortage (see:
http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html ). Indeed, Lowell and
Salzman found that “the supply of S&E-qualified graduates
is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the
number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown,
and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical
standards.” The “education system produces qualified graduates far
in excess of demand.” Lowell and Salzman concluded that “purported
labor market shortages for scientists and engineers are anecdotal
and also not supported by the available evidence…The assumption
that difficulties in hiring is just due to supply can have
counterproductive consequences: an increase in supply that leads to
high unemployment, lowered wages, and decline in working conditions
will have the long-term effect of weakening future supply.” Lowell
and Salzman noted that “available evidence indicates an ample
supply of students whose preparation and performance has been
increasing over the past decades.”
Mercedes Schneider, who teaches in a public high school in Louisiana and holds a Ph.D. in research methods, wrote a post about the transaction in which Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify bought the rights to Core Knowledge ELA for 20 years.
She wrote:
A quick summary: A 2012 American Educator article notes that CK materials are free for teachers both in New York and across the nation to download. The CK website has some (but not all) CK ELA free materials, but only to read, and these have been recently “updated” (according to the CK site record) but are amazingly outdated. So, for usable, truly updated CK ELA K3 materials, one can go to the CK website, but one is redirected to Murdoch’s Amplify, where one must purchase these now-certainly-not-free CK ELA K3 materials.
When she went to the Amplify website, “The cheapest item by far is $650 for a CK ELA kit to serve 25 children. That’s $26 per student– just a few dollars shy of the cost per student for a Jeb-Bush-promoted PARCC assessment.”
“As a teacher, I realize the importance of schools’ purchasing teaching materials that are reproducible. Most schools do not have the funds for substantial annual curricular purchases for all subjects. And yet, the Amplify CK ELA materials are not reproducible, which means that a school would have to pay some serious money each year in order to use materials that are deceptively publicized as “free.”
E.D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., has never profited from the Core Knowledge materials or program. He has placed every dollar from the royalties of his books into the Core Knowledge Foundation, which exists to disseminate his ideas about the importance of content. Let me repeat: Hirsch has not profited from the selling of any CK materials.
I asked Hirsch to respond to Mercedes Schneider’s blog post above. This is his response:
Dear Mercedes Schneider:
I noticed from the latest update of your blog that you have found the site where you can download all the latest files and materials from Core Knowledge Language Arts pre-K-3, — available to all under a creative commons license, which means that anyone can print, amend or use in any other way for their school or personal use, so long as they don’t try to sell it. If you were a first grade teacher you could print up copies for yourself and any number of students, You would not be charged a penny by anyone, and Amplify would not earn a penny.
In your update you complain that this web address is hard to find. I’m not great on computers, but here’s the way I found it. I went to the Core Knowledge web site, which appears when you google “Core Knowledge.” Then I wrote “CKLA download” which brings you to a web page that has a “free download manager.”
One of the reasons we put this site up is our dissatisfaction with the New York State website. As you note it still has the old 2010 pilot version of the materials when they were first sites being worked on, and did not want them downloaded yet. The NY site also has the up to date current version . You are right that those old sites old are still live, and we have urged that they be taken down. Those old sites have all the “still under construction” warnings that discourage distribution. We continue to try to get those out of date sites taken down. But we have no control over the bureaucracy of NY state.
The only way Amplify can make money from CK Pre-K-through 3 is if a school or district doesn’t want to bother with printing, and therefore orders from them. But this also means that Amplify would need to offer the materials at an attractive price.
And there’s another twist you could not have known about. We were pretty good bargainers on behalf of the public in this deal. Amplfify helped pay for the development of grade 3. But we insisted grade 3 also got put up for free.
You need to consult with Amplify where they expect to make money from all this. They are underwriting the development costs of grades 4 and 5, and our contract with them is a regular 20 year publisher’s contract with royalties to CKF. They probably hope that having the whole pre-K 5 package, with pre-k 3 available for free will make 4 and 5 attractive. You’ll have to ask them. Our view is: we want the get these coherent, knowledge-based materials available to as many schools as possible. And for as many grades as possible for free.
Don Hirsch
E.D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., submitted the following essay to the blog. He is the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum and has written several books explains the ideas behind it, beginning with “Cultural Literacy,” and including “The Schools We Need,” and “The Knowledge Deficit.”
He writes:
Diane kindly offered me a blog slot on her site – a great opportunity to explain what I’m about. I intend to exploit her generosity only this once.
I’m inspired to do so, because just now I had an exchange on Diane’s site with a teacher (TB) who observed that my granddaughter Cleo – a new teacher in the Bronx – didn’t need the Core Knowledge materials on the American Revolution – there were plenty of good New York State materials up for free on the web.
This sort of exchange with an undertone about the money nexus, and the underlying sense that someone was going to be making money by selling Core Knowledge materials, also characterized the prior discussion about the Core Knowledge literacy program – until it was revealed that the only completed grades – of the Core Knowledge program — pre-k through 3 are up for free both on the Core Knowledge website and elsewhere. The suspicion is very understandable. I’m quite familiar with the money nexus in schooling and its corrupting influence. But let’s be clear regarding the context for this post. I don’t make any money from any of this, and I’m far too old to go out garnering dollars for speaking engagements.
So let’s get back to Cleo and her 7th-grade students who have to learn the Revolutionary period. It was said by T B, (the experienced NY social studies teacher) that Cleo could find out what background knowledge about American history the students already possessed by consulting the social studies standards for prior grades. I looked. Since grade six did not cover American history, Cleo’s students most recent exposure would have been in grade 5, where one finds content guides for “History of the United States, Canada, and Latin America”: They aren’t long, and I quote them in full:
Different ethnic, national, and religious groups, including Native American Indians, have contributed to the cultural diversity of these nations and regions by sharing their customs, traditions, beliefs, ideas, and languages. # Different people living in the Western Hemisphere may view the same event or issue from different perspectives. # The migration of groups of people in the United States, Canada, and Latin America has led to cultural diffusion because people carry their ideas and ways of life with them when they move from place to place. # Connections and exchanges exist between and among the peoples of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. These connections and exchanges include social/cultural, migration/immigration, and scientific/technological. Key turning points and events in the histories of Canada, Latin America, and the United States can be organized into different historical time periods. For example, key turning points might include: 18th-century exploration and encounter; 19th-century westward migration and expansion, 20th-century population movement from rural to suburban areas. Important historic figures and groups have made significant contributions to the development of Canada, Latin America, and the United States. Industrial growth and development and urbanization have had important impacts on Canada, Latin America, and the United States.
That’s the complete “content guide.” The general themes are admirable but the section is mis-titled. They are thematic guides, not content guides. It’s not even clear where emphasis should fall or time spent as between Canada, Latin America, or the United States. To know what my 7th graders already knew, I’d need to have more specific guidance. So after inspecting this, I’d have to disagree with “TB.” Looking at this document is not going to help Cleo know what her students already know.
I’ll not waste time on more and more examples. This document is fairly typical of the DOE guides found throughout the USA.
The fat Core Knowledge Teachers Guide for grade 4 that I sent to Cleo was different. It summarized the relevant knowledge that Core Knowledge students had already learned about American history in grades K-3. It laid out what sequence of unifying and organizing topics would be useful for units in teaching the Revolution, and it also laid out some detailed historical knowledge and sources that it would be useful for teachers to have above and beyond what they would be teaching their students, along with suggested books for students who might want to take some topics further. The guiding organization for this material was the list of topics in the Core Knowledge Sequence for grade 4, which follows:
Teachers: In fourth grade students should undertake a detailed study of the causes, major figures, and consequences of the American revolution, with a focus on main events and figures, as well as these questions: What caused the colonists to break away and become an independent nation? What significant ideas and values are at the heart of the American revolution?
A. BACKGROUND: THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
• Also known as the Seven Years’ War, part of an ongoing struggle between Britain and France for control of colonies in various regions around the world (in this case, in North America)
• Alliances with Native Americans
• The Battle of Quebec
• British victory gains territory but leaves Britain financially weakened.
B. CAUSESAND PROVOCATIONS
• British taxes, “No taxation without representation”
• Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks
• Boston Tea Party
• The Intolerable Acts close the port of Boston and require Americans to provide
quarters for British troops
• First Continental Congress protests to King George III
• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
C. THE REVOLUTION
• Paul Revere’s ride, “One if by land, two if by sea”
• Lexington and Concord
The “shot heard ’round the world”
Redcoats and Minute Men
• Bunker Hill
• Second Continental Congress: George Washington appointed commander in chief of
Continental Army
• Declaration of Independence
Primarily written by Thomas Jefferson
Adopted July 4, 1776
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
• Women in the Revolution: Elizabeth Freeman, Deborah Sampson, Phillis Wheatley,
Molly Pitcher
• Loyalists (Tories)
• Victory at Saratoga, alliance with France
• European helpers (Lafayette, the French fleet, Bernardo de Galvez, Kosciusko,
von Steuben)
• Valley Forge
• Benedict Arnold
See also Language Arts 4:
stories by Washington Irving,
and speech by Patrick Henry,
“Give me liberty. . .”
John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight.”
• Nathan Hale: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
• Cornwallis: surrender at Yorktown
II. making a Constitutional Government
Teachers: Examine some of the basic values and principles of American democracy, in both theory and practice, as defined in the declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, both in historical context and in terms of present-day practice. In examining the significance of the U. S. Constitution, introduce students to the unique nature of the American experiment, the difficult task of establishing a democratic government, the compromises the framers of the Constitution were willing to make, and the persistent threats to success. In order to appreciate the boldness and fragility of the American attempt to establish a republican government based on a constitution, students should know that republican governments were rare at this time. discuss with students basic questions and issues about government, such as: Why do societies need government? Why does a society need laws? Who makes the laws in the United States? What might happen in the absence of government and laws?
A. MAIN IDEAS BEHIND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
• The proposition that “All men are created equal”
• The responsibility of government to protect the “unalienable rights” of the people
• Natural rights: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
• The “right of the people … to institute new government”
B.MAKINGA NEW GOVERNMENT: FROM THE DECLARATIONTO THE CONSTITUTION
• Definition of “republican” government: republican = government by elected
representatives of the people
• Articles of Confederation: weak central government
• “Founding Fathers”: James Madison as “Father of the Constitution”
• Constitutional Convention
Arguments between small and large states
The divisive issue of slavery, “three-fifths” compromise
C. THE CONSTITUTIONOF THE UNITED STATES
• Preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.”
• The separation and sharing of powers in American government: three branches
of government
Legislative branch: Congress = House of Representatives and Senate, makes laws
Executive branch: headed by the president, carries out laws
Judicial branch: a court system headed by the Supreme Court (itself headed by the
Chief Justice), deals with those who break laws and with disagreements about laws
• Checks and balances, limits on government power, veto
• The Bill of Rights: first ten amendments to the Constitution, including:
Freedom of religion, speech, and the press (First Amendment)
Protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures”
The right to “due process of law”
The right to trial by jury
Protection against “cruel and unusual punishments”
Note: The National Standards for Civics and Government recommend that students address the issue of power vs. authority: “Where do people in government get the authority to make, apply, and enforce rules and laws and manage disputes about them?” “Identify examples of authority, e.g., the authority of teachers and administrators to make rules for schools, the authority of a crossing guard
to direct traffic, the authority of the president to represent the United States in dealing with other nations.” “Identify examples of power without authority, e.g., a neighborhood bully forcing younger children to give up their lunch money, a robber holding up a bank, a gang leader ordering members to injure others.” Available from the Center for Civic Education, 5145 Douglas Fir Road, Calabasas, CA 91302;
tel. (818) 591-9321.
Let me define what I’m trying to sell in a single word: specificity. (It certainly doesn’t have to be the Core Knowledge version of specificity — any similar teacher-created sequence, as ours was, will do.) Specificity in turn leads to coherence, and cumulativeness in teaching from grade to grade.
Now specificity is an easy target. People (unfamiliar with cognitive science) will accuse you of wanting to teach a laundry list, not true understanding. Once you get specific you leave yourself open to a hundred caricatures and gripes. So I guess, along with the virtue of specificity, I’m arguing for the virtue of standing up to the inevitable attacks that will greet any group of teachers who decide to get specific.
The alternative to specificity is vagueness, which sounds virtuous, because it imposes nothing in particular. But vagueness in early grades really leads in later grades to hugely difficult teaching tasks, and a continued uncertainty about what students know and need to know. In Core Knowledge schools, specificity leads to a great deal of cooperation between teachers at different grade levels. Moreover, along with the idea of specificity, I’m also trying to sell its ethical corollary, the idea that vagueness is not a virtue.
In an earlier post, retired high school English teacher Randall Hendee expressed his opposition to the Core Knowledge curriculum, which contains specific knowledge that students are expected to learn.
Here, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, responds to Hendee.
Full disclosure : I was a board member of Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation for several years. He has been a friend since 1983, when I met him at a conference in California and we discussed our mutual concern about curriculum content. When we were both part of the Koret Task Force at the conservative Hoover Foundation, Don and I were partners in a debate with Caroline Hoxby and Paul Peterson. We argued that curriculum and instruction were more important than markets and choice. They argued that markets and choice were more important.
Hirsch writes:
“This discussion started when Diane cited Mr. Hendee’s criticism of my Huffington Blog, and this comment is addressed mainly to Mr. Hendee.
“Your account of what I said in the blog was selective to the point of distortion. My blog had a double theme, stated in its title: “Teacher Bashing and Common Core Bashing are both Uncalled For.” (I’ve always admired Diane’s courageous defense of teachers and of the public schools – as I stated in my NYRB review of her prior book.)
“In defense of the Common Core, I pointed out that its call for a coherent and cumulative plan of content across grade levels was far from an untried scheme, but is characteristic of all best and fairest school systems.
“But I spent much more space on the benefits to teachers of content coherence: I said, “This fall, my granddaughter Cleo, will be teaching in a school in the Bronx, assigned to teach the American Revolution to seventh grade public school students. Though hugely competent, she panicked and called me: “Oh my gosh. Granddad, are there any teaching guides for this?” Her school could offer no real support. I sent her one of the thick, grade-by-grade teacher handbooks produced by the Core Knowledge Foundation. In them each topic is explained and instructional suggestions are provided. … Cleo was greatly relieved. But what about all the other Cleo’s out there who are being thrown into these sink-or-swim situations in our public schools, sent into classrooms where it’s impossible to know what their students already know, and where teachers are given scant guidance about what they should be teaching — or worse — are asked to teach literacy classes based on the trivial and fragmented fictions found in the standard literacy textbooks? That’s why I have become so impatient with the teacher bashing that has overtaken the education reform movement. The favored structural reforms haven’t worked very well. The new emphasis on “teacher quality” implies that the reforms haven’t worked because the teachers (rather than the reform principles themselves) are ineffective. A more reasonable interpretation is that reforms haven’t worked because on average they have done little to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades.”
“On the other points in the discussion: No, I’ve never drawn a salary from Core Knowledge, and won’t make a cent from the literacy program,which in any case can be downloaded in full for free from the Core Knowledge web site. Finally I have no idea who controls the comments on Huffington.”
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, wrote an article opposing value-added teacher evaluation, especially in reading. Hirsch supports the Common Core but thinks it may be jeopardized by the rush to test it and tie the scores to teacher evaluations. He knows this will encourage teaching to the test and other negative consequences.
Hirsch believes that if teachers teach strong subject matter, their students will do well on the reading tests. But he sees the downside of tying test scores to salary and jobs.
He writes:
“The first thing I’d want to do if I were younger would be to launch an effective court challenge to value-added teacher evaluations on the basis of test scores in reading comprehension. The value-added approach to teacher evaluation in reading is unsound both technically and in its curriculum-narrowing effects. The connection between job ratings and tests in ELA has been a disaster for education.”
He is right. Will the so-called reformers who recently became Hirschians listen?
The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are struggling to come to terms with the New York testing disaster. They certainly will not retreat from their deep faith in standardized testing, and they insist that there must be more parent choice, even though parents are sick of the excessive testing and most continue to choose their neighborhood school, if they still have one.
This is my favorite line:
“Reform critics like Diane Ravitch often question why we don’t push reforms that would create a “Sidwell Friends” for every student. Putting aside where we would find the extra $1.6 trillion it would take to make that possible, there is a simpler answer: some of us don’t want Sidwell Friends. And just because some believe the elite culture of the top 1 percent is what’s best for all children, doesn’t mean all parents share that belief.”
I can’t say where that $1.6 trillion number comes from. I went to ordinary public schools that did not face annual budget crisis, that did not squander millions on standardized testing, that provided arts programming and daily physical education and foreign languages, that did not fire teachers if students got low test scores. But people who did not go to ordinary public schools may not know that.
What I want to challenge here is the assertion that “some of us don’t want” what the best private schools have to offer.
Who wouldn’t want what Sidwell offers? Or Exeter? Or Lakeside Academy in Seattle?
Who wouldn’t want classes of 12-15 instead of 35-40?
Who wouldn’t want a beautiful campus?
Who wouldn’t want experienced, respected teachers?
Who wouldn’t want a rich curriculum with science labs, history projects, drama and music, and lots of sports every day?
Who wouldn’t want to go to a school that never gave standardized tests and didn’t judge teachers by students test scores?
Maybe there are such people. I have never met them. Maybe they work at Fordham or the Gates Foundation, but I doubt it.
Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago lab School. He has been writing brilliant critiques of corporate reform. In this post, he reviews the history of efforts to make education rational, predictable, and measurable.
A few nuggets:
“Have you ever read Dr. Seuss’, The Butter-Battle Book? It made perfect sense to me, a Cold War military brat. The “boys in the backroom” were very smart. They were data whizzes and they invented computers that made them a lot smarter than everybody else. Both the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” believed that those “boys in the back room” could figure out solutions to every problem. But the biggest problem was that only human beings who could effectively communicate, not computers or data, could solve the world’s problems. “The boys in the backroom” were only doing what they were told: they were the smartest, but not the best communicators in town. None of those “boys” said, “making more weapons that can kill more people might not be the best way to go.” But everybody believed in them, almost religiously, to the brink of nuclear war. Slim Pickins didn’t bat an eye when he decided to ride his big A-bomb to victory.
“This might seem strange to you, but, from my very humble perspective, we might need another Dr. Seuss to write a book with a similar theme, but in a different setting. The question has become, what happens when the “boys in the backroom” take over after the “Yooks” and the “Zooks” have stopped threatening each other? What happens when one of the “boys in the backroom” becomes the richest guy in the world and decides that he wants to build “Gatopia”? What happens if he convinces many of the other richest guys that our country is doomed unless we completely tear down and rebuild the way that we teach our kids? And what happens when he and many of his very wealthy friends tell the red and blue politicians that he and his friends can make sure that they will not get campaign funding if they don’t support “Gatopia”?”
Gatopia “seeks to turn human beings into computers that are efficient and well behaved. Most importantly, computers do not ask questions or demand accountability: they do what they are told.”
Horton describes how he fell in love with learning and recognizes that Gatopia has no room for the experiences he had:
“Learning for me was about connecting with a human being. Learning was reflected in my ability to write something. I wanted to please my very demanding teachers, I wanted to conform to their expectations of excellence. I dreaded the conference to go over a paper that fell hopelessly below those standards, but respected my teachers for holding me to them.
I want my son to have teachers like I had, and I want the same for his kids. I do not want “the boys in the back room” telling me how my kid and grandkids should be educated. Sometimes the smartest people can’t think up the most important questions. Democracy requires citizens, and computers cannot produce citizens. Computers often mask deficits that we most need to develop. Data is not knowledge. We are in grave danger if we are tempted to believe that it is.”
Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network congratulates Arne Duncan for saying that there was “no excuse” for states that fail to fund their schools.
Jeff was quick to point out that the “no excuse” mantra is customarily used by Duncan and other corporate reformers to blame teachers for low test scores.
It is refreshing to hear the same rhetoric directed at governors and legislatures that abandon their responsibility to fund public schools.
Bryant writes:
“In his statement to the Pennsylvania officials overseeing the Philadelphia mess, Duncan urged, “We must invest in public education, not abandon it.”
“So yes, “No excuse.”
“When valued neighborhood schools are shuttered with no more justification than a press release, there’s no excuse.
“When public school administrators are forced to cut learning opportunities that keep students safe, healthy, engaged, and supported. No excuse.
“When teachers and parents have to speak out to prevent larger and larger class sizes…
“When students walk out of school because their favorite subjects and teachers are cut…
“When whole communities have to turn out into the streets to protest the plundering of the common good…
“No excuse. No excuse. No excuse!”
David Saville Muzzey was widely recognized for most of the twentieth century as the greatest writer of U.S. history textbooks in the nation. He was a historian at Barnard College, Columbia University, and he was a gifted storyteller.
His books read as the work of a single writer, vigorous, thoughtful, and opinionated, but not in a partisan sense. He knew history and he knew how to write the great stories and weave facts into a coherent narrative. The first edition of Muzzey’s textbook was printed in 1911 and was so popular that it was regularly updated. At some point, I am not sure exactly whether it was before or after his death, his popular textbooks became a committee project, and over time they lost the distinctive quality that had made them so beloved. That distinctive quality was, of course, his voice. Over time, they were ground down into the voiceless and turgid informational text that we associate with the typical history textbook.
Many years ago, I found a first edition of Muzzey’s An American History. The front cover is spotted and the spine is broken but the prose still sparkles.
I want to share with you his concluding paragraph. Set aside for the moment his omission of women and his reference to the nations vying to control “the destinies of the undeveloped races,” which dates him. But what is not dated is his message. It speaks to us today, a century later:
The problems of a democracy are ever changing to meet the developing needs and the unfolding ideals of the people. Our problem in America at the opening of the twentieth century is no longer that of George Washington’s day,–to establish the forms and powers of a republican government; nor that of Andrew Jackson’s day,–to admit to a full share in that government the sturdy manhood of the nation; nor that of Abraham Lincoln’s day,–to save the life of the Union while cutting from it the cancer of slavery; nor that of William McKinley’s day,–to introduce the United States among the nations which are to control the destinies of the undeveloped races of the world. To-day we are rich, united, powerful. But the very material prosperity which is our boast menaces the life of our democracy. The power of money threatens to choke the power of law. The spirit of gain is sacrificing to its insatiable greed the spirit of brotherhood and the very life of the toilers of the land–even the joyous years of tender childhood. Unless we are to sink into ignoble slavery or fall a prey to horrid revolution, the manhood of the nation must rise in its moral strength to restore our democratic institutions to the real control of the people, to assert the superiority of men over machines, and the value of a brotherhood of social cooperation and mutual goodwill above the highest statistics of commercial gain. Our noble mission is still to realize the promise of the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
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 