A fervent defense of public education with abundant examples of how privatization has failed to deliver on its promises.
An urgent appeal to prevent the privatization of our public schools.
In her latest, education expert Ravitch (Education/New York Univ.; Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, 2013, etc.) documents the failures of the “disrupters” of public education—those who wish to privatize the public system—and celebrates the work of grassroots activists resisting the push for charter schools and vouchers at the expense of the nation’s schools. “The purpose of public schools,” writes the author, “is to encourage students to think and act as citizens of a democratic society, prepared to do their part in making it better for everyone.” In addition to the curriculum, public schools teach “integrity, honesty, civility, industriousness, responsibility, and ethics.” Such schooling is undercut by poverty, inequality, and racial segregation as well as by the draining of financial resources away from public schools toward charter schools and vouchers for primarily religious schools. Throughout, Ravitch shows how the disrupters’ emphasis on standardized testing narrows the curriculum, encourages test preparation over instruction, and treats all students as if their needs are the same. The move to privatize public schools has been “funded by billionaires and financiers” who oppose “accountability and transparency.” This lack of accountability has led to numerous examples of financial corruption, all well documented by the author. Privatization, in Ravitch’s estimation, is wrong for any number of reasons—e.g., it involves public funds with private management; it promotes segregation (race, social class, religion, etc.); it takes away funding that rightly belongs to the public schools; it “is a direct assault on democracy” in that it is not answerable to elected school boards. Furthermore, there is little or no evidence that charter schools or the voucher system have resulted in higher test scores. In response to this assault on public education, there have been successful grassroots struggles, many examples of which are chronicled by Ravitch.
A fervent defense of public education with abundant examples of how privatization has failed to deliver on its promises.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-52-565537-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
An endearing and lively account of what one teacher encountered in a year with a private nursery school ``class from hell'' on Manhattan's educationally progressive Upper West Side. A preschool teacher for 20 years, Wollman had decided to keep a detailed journal of a recent school year before she knew that her class of 13 three- and four-year-olds would have more than its share of problems. True, there was an unusual number of unruly and immature children (one youngster was still in diapers). But affecting the behavior of the class even more was a procession of tragic events, including deaths and illnesses in almost every child's family, putting extraordinary demands on Wollman and her assistant, Cathy. For, as Wollman says, ``preschool teachers do a lot more than play games and bandage scraped knees.'' They socialize and civilize, give the children a safe place to learn how to identify emotions and express them verbally, and work (carefully) with parents to detect and correct problems. The children come to life: Harris, who struggles to overcome the scars left by a babysitter who hit and screamed at him; Jeremy, who's blaming himself for the baby sibling who died at birth; Sharon, who had a difficult ear operation early in the school year; and the other ten enchanting, frustrating, bright youngsters (names are changed). Though Wollman is often exhausted, troubled, and challenged by her charges, nevertheless, year's end finds the class and its teachers a tightly knit, productive group and the parents rightly grateful to have found a nurturing haven for their children. Wollman writes, ``[We] felt victorious...We had enriched the lives of thirteen families who would never be the same.'' A year's adventures in the world of collage, cubbies, and time-out, told with wit and humanity. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-684-19665-4
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
The 1992 recipient of the Soldier of the Year award, who saw a brilliant Army career crumble when he decided to come out of the closet, breathlessly recaptures the events surrounding his sensational gesture. Zuniga comes from a family with deep roots in the US military; he clearly has great respect for the Army as an institution, with the exception of its ruling on homosexuals. His home life of military-style discipline is described affectionately and fairly, as is his successful career as an Army journalist. Boot camp at Fort Hood is seen as a period of exultant self-discovery. He did not find it difficult to maintain a clandestine gay lifestyle inside the Army, he says—in fact, most of his friends there were gay. We get interesting behind-the-lines scenes of the Gulf War, in which he served as a medic; he seems to stress his bonding relations with straight men as if to prove that sexual orientation did not interfere with duty. A turning point suddenly arrived when the predicament of a lesbian supply technician (sexually harassed and then dishonorably discharged at the harasser's instigation) aroused Zuniga's guilt at not announcing his own homosexuality. Transferred to San Francisco's Presidio barracks, he felt his double life ready to overtake him. He made his announcement on April 24, 1993, just four months after President Clinton's reiterated promise to lift the ban on gays in the armed services. Zuniga is a bit too taken with his own heroism here: ``I risked it not to become a Nelson Mandela or Andrei Sakharovtype figure in gay history,'' he says unironically, ``but because Silence truly does equal Death.'' That he did not, unlike those men, spend years in confinement for his actions does not, alas, seem to have occurred to him. Honest and emotionally charged, but marred by childish and clichÇd political rhetoric.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-88814-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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