--------- "Consider another possibility -- that the complete triumph of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, etc will lead to a huge burst of creativity and independent thought among U.S. children. They will be confined in such a rigid framework that in order to survive at all they will have to develop new and more powerful modes of resistance."
No. That's unlikely to happen. Once you've convinced kids that they're stupid, it's mostly over. If this were the case, we'd see "huge bursts of creativity" in China. Haven't heard of such.
"Several decades ago a book appeared which unfortunately did not live up to the promise of its title: On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock_. It was a huge disappointment, but the book promised in the title still needs to be written."
Actually, it has been written, and it's a great book: Ong's "Ramus and the Decay of Dialog."
Joanna