1) As a young novelist, I collected examples of bad prose. Some of the worst English in my file of jargon and obscurity was by educators. How could this be? Wouldn’t you expect educators to set high standards of clarity and precision?
2 If you have ever watched Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking,” you know that Americans don’t know very much. Endless surveys confirm this. Our students don’t compare favorably with students from other countries, especially when our much larger expenditures per pupil are factored in. Is this the best we can do?

3) As a practical, somewhat scientifically minded person, I was haunted by the suspicion that education could be organized more efficiently than was normally done. American education during the 20th century seems to have had an odd affinity for bad ideas. Worse, I began to sense that this affinity was not accidental but premeditated. As I researched the matter, I found more and more quotes from early educators indicating that they hoped to turn schools into mechanisms not for elevating students but for leveling them. Would the American people vote to have their children dumbed down? Of course not. Educators had to resort to stealth. “Dumbing down” is a common phrase, but not the whole story. A more revealing phrase is: “dumb by design.” ————————————————————————————–
My guess is that we need to confront these bad ideas one by one, and deliberately replace them with better ideas. My site Improve-Education.org is intended to be part of this renewal.

“In her essay, Vanessa Wills casually conflates activism, compassion, and a typical liberal agenda. I say this is sophistry. As antidote, I suggest Max Eastman’s Reflections on the Failure of Socialism, one of the world’s great (short) books. I would love to know if anyone at Princeton teaches it.

Personally, I’d been noticing the last few years how so-called activists always seemed to be liberals. When I decided to set up a Web site (Improve-Education.org) pushing more sensible approaches to education, I decided that I would hail myself, in press releases, as an “education activist.” A little tongue-in-cheek, but when I think about the ignorance and illiteracy that so-called liberal educators have fostered, I have to conclude I’m the real activist here.”

BRUCE DEITRICK PRICE / Norfolk, Va.
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Well, that’s the edited version that they published; but the gist is there. The key thing omitted about Max Eastman’s book is that, after he renounced Communism, he couldn’t decide what to call himself. He said, in effect: “I want to call myself a liberal. But the Commies have stolen the word.” This all the way back in 1953!! The problem persists. People calling themselves liberals push ideas (in education and elsewhere) that aren’t liberal at all. Not Jeffersonian liberal. Not liberal as in devoted to liberty (the terms were once synonymous). So I, like Max, can’t call myself a liberal. I thought I had better start calling myself an education activist before some of the same people could completely steal this phrase. And that is how I became an education activist!