Bad bloggers

The School of Bloggers apologize for their poor blogging behavior! They spent the weekend far, far away from noisy Brooklyn on Lake Chatuge in North Carolina.

Nor do I have time to say anything profound right now, even though there is SO MUCH TO BLOG ABOUT. So I will let the Public Education Network's "Quote of the Week" say it for me.

"Democratic values are a necessary, even if not sufficient, condition for defending the existence of a system of public education. Only from a democratic perspective can one claim that the schools have an impact on and responsibility to the whole society and that as a result they are a democratic decision making. From Jefferson to Dewey to Mann, and especially during the heyday of progressive education, such ideas were at the center of educational politics. In their absence, there is no longer any convincing rationale to keep the school public and social in terms oftheir governance, finance, and pedagogy.

The battleground over their future is thus yielded to those who argue that the market can and should make such determinations. This ultimately supports a system of privatized schools in an educational free market, linked to a curricular agenda defined by the needs of a capitalist economy and the national-security state associated with it. In short, we cannot defend public education, mobilize a constituency behind it, or achieve the visions of democratic educators without a clear and convincing democratic ideological framework that provides a rationale for maintaining a socially owned, controlled,and financed school system. If the market prevails as a model for organizing U.S. education, the possibilities for strengthening a democratic society and developing a democratic citizenry are ended."

-Michael Engel (author/professor/school board member), "The Struggle forControl of Public Education: Market Ideology vs. Democratic Values