Education reformers and public school advocates will find a powerful ally here.
A polemic against the ongoing dismantling of public education.
Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, boasts an unusual background. Though he grew up in a pious, politically conservative, and overwhelmingly White community—“the three categories were so intertwined that I never thought to distinguish them”—he elected to major as an undergraduate in African American studies. If, as Black writes, it was public education that gave him access to the American promise of upward mobility, so should public education serve the same purpose for all Americans. The assault on the system by private individuals, to say nothing of ideological enemies such as Betsy DeVos and the Koch brothers, serves the interest of inequality and has clear racial and anti-democratic components. Arguing that public education may provide the glue necessary to put the country back together after the Trump era, Black embarks on an insistent, sometimes repetitive consideration of its constitutional foundations, noting that education is enshrined as a right in every state constitution—an elevated role that, indeed, was a sine qua non for formal admission into the federal system. It is precisely in the states of the former Confederacy and its satellites that the war against public education has been most pitched, areas in which there are high concentrations of African American students. Black’s argument is persuasive, though too often themes and bits of data are repeated to no real purpose. Still, the author makes a solid and well-founded case for considering public education to be a pillar of American democratic governance and not a commodity to be cheapened, bargained away, and privatized, the apparent goal of the current presidential administration. Instead, Black writes, “states do not need to experiment with public education; they need to fund it.”
Education reformers and public school advocates will find a powerful ally here.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-8844-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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