I could be mistaken, but for many liberals teacher and public school bashing is a convenient face saving strategy. They see and bemoan the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, but instead of admitting that the problem is structural, which would require a radical solution, they fancy themselves that the poor are merely "left behind" by the educational system - so they imagine that half-assed and acceptable to corporate bosses "solutions" aiming to "fix" education - first by busing, now by weeing out "bad" teachers and privatizing schools - will solve the problem. In that respect, they are useful idiots whose main usefulness is their capacity to influence public opinion.
Wojtek
On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:
> Here's what I don't get: we're constantly told the U.S. is falling behind
> in math and science compared to our Asian and European peers.
>
>
> Yet instead of trying to imitate the successful aspects of their
> educational systems, we're moving in essentially the opposite direction
> towards the casualization of teaching and what our British friends might
> call public-private partnerships. I can understand the logic from the
> perspective of the elite in this country, but why aren't more Americans
> noticing the obvious inconsistency here?
>
>
> It's similar to the health care debate, where we refused to engage with the
> best practices abroad, but here it's even more egregious because there's a
> widespread acceptance that our educational system *isn't* the best in the
> world.
>
>
>
>
>
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