by Last evening, January 2nd, my favorite journalist/talk show host once again demonstrated how his IQ can drop in half when the subject being discussed is education. Rich guy, and probably well-meaning, philanthropist Geoffrey Canada saluted the Bloomberg/Klein cabal, touted merit pay, bashed teacher unions, demanded a longer school day, pretended that the multi-billion dollar disaster of American standardized tests compared our kids to foreign students, supported KIPP Academy and even went so far as to cite the Houston public schools under Rod Paige’s leadership despite the documented evidence that the “Houston Miracle” that spawned NCLB was a complete fraud for which only the whistleblower was punished. Mr. Canada also took umbrage with the phony baloney issue of “social promotion” and wishes NCLB were fully-funded.
Canada kept repeating that the reason poor kids are in failing schools is because of politics, Yet, all of his political theories are faith-based free-market schemes with no record of success anywhere and not a single example of actual classroom practice – in other words HIS pitch is 100% political.
I LOVE Charlie Rose. I rarely miss a program. I used to watch his 2-6 AM show, CBS Nightwatch, in the 1980s. There is no better interviewer on science, the arts, culture or politics than Mr. Rose. However, on the rare occasion he covers education, his guests are always conservative drill and kill proponents. The conservatives want vouchers, more testing and longer school days. The liberals want merit pay, more testing and longer school days.
The only guests I’ve seen on Charlie Rose in recent years have been Chancellor Klein the founder of Teach-for-America and Geoffrey Canada. For some reason the ordinarily remarkable journalist, Rose, completely suspends his disbelief and allows his platform to be used to promote dopey educational theories that are ruining the lives of children.
Perhaps Mr. Rose does not know that other voices exist in public education or that there are successful urban schools where the students are treated as his Upper East Side friends expect their children to be educated.
I offer a partial list of guests who can share their expertise and present a different vision of education for future television programs:
Dennis Littky & Elliot Washor
Jonathan Kozol
Deborah Meier
Herbert Kohl
Theodore Sizer
Alfie Kohn
Susan Ohanian
Etta Kralovek
Roger Schank
Ron Canuel
Stephen Krashen
Constance Kamii
Gerald Coles
Gerald Bracey
Ken Goodman
John Taylor Gatto
Robert Coles
Diane Ravitch
Ted Hamory & Stephanie Lee
George Wood
Lella Gandini
Pedro Noguera
Chris Lehman
me
Related article – Bill Gates and Eli Broad Go Gangsta
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.
Excellent list of proposed education guests.
1. Why only one link under the names?
2. I watched your debate with Will Richardson and you did a nice job imitating a politician.
Finally… You are missing someone… Scott…
I got lazy on links and only linked people you might find hard to find information about.
I watched the interview with interest as I have very little knowledge outside my own environment which is a private school in Australia. I take your points but a great deal of what Canada said is reflected in my experience.
–It is very difficult to replace poor teachers (fire)
–unions will battle many of the innovations which could cause teaching to become more professional.
–although many business structures would not work in education, it is true that both the structure of education and within teaching does not encourage the best and brightest to become the leaders – this is probably more true in private schools where the principal is more likely to be a person skilled in PR as opposed to (sometimes in addition to) being a skilled and enlightened educator.
I was concerned with Canada’s acceptance of the NCLB measures and thought I would like to see more of a discussion of the failings of this system as I have read a great deal about where schools and districts have fudged the numbers to remain viable in the face of the annual school assessment.
I personally go along with questioning the length of the school year. I also liked the comparison between the cost of keeping someone in prison and educating a child.
As I indicated before, I am a teacher and technology manager in an Australian school so I apologise for seeming silly in commenting on the American scene.
Thanks Gary, I have seen you present in Australia and have read many of your online pieces and always find them thought provoking.
I just wrote the following on this blog…
http://edreform.blogspot.com/
So, let’s say that you turn the system, or even a single classroom over to Mr. Canada…
What would he DO? I mean aside from the merit pay nonsense which has been demonstrated to not work in the corporate world and his insane notion that doing more of the same longer will produce a different result.
Where does Canada think that all of the fabulous teachers would come from? He admitted that there are no urban options for kids to transfer to from failing schools.
Governor Huckabee thinks there ought to be a lot more art and music education in our public schools? Does Canada agree?
Canada has an interesting take on “community” when he endorses an administration that has eliminated local involvement in schools.
Canada speaks of “grade level” as if it is chiseled into sacred tablets and demonstrates his profound ignorance of standardized testing by saying that the tests somehow compare children in NY and China. The corporatized standardized tests that American taxpayers waste billions on each year (and can’t even get scored properly), are not taken by students in other countries?
Canada actually endorsed the massive fraud in Houston as a model of school reform, while acknowledging that there is some dispute over it legitimacy! That makes him either a charlatan or blind ideologue.
By the way, how many times should the NYC Public schools reorganize within a few years? How much did all of that deck shuffling cost?
Would Joel Klein send his own children to a KIPP Academy? How come we only treat poor children in such a fashion? I don’t know of any schools in Scarsdale embracing the KIPP model.