Web Log Entry #1

The PBS site and the Gatto site are very different. I personally have found the PBS site to be very interesting. I was especially interested to read about Deborah Meier. Meier is someone to be admired. She has devoted her life to improving the education of disadvantaged children working in the troubled areas of Harlem and now Roxbury, Massachusetts. She has done what I think is so important: involved parents in the education of their children. She has also spoken out against our preoccupation with standards and testing. I would be very interested to read her book, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem. I wold also be interested to know her opinion of the Promise Academy in Harlem that is getting press today. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html?emc=eta1).

Although most of my students do not come from disadvantaged homes, each year I have a few who do. I try hard to involve the parents of these students so that their involvement is similar to that of my other students. It is often difficult to do. The benefits of parent involvement are clear.

Gatto's web page is very different from the PBS site. He is clearly angry about what has gone on in education in this country. I get frustrated reading his material because it is so negative. I understand that there were and are varied forces influencing education and that some are very negative. He paints a bleak picture. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and Morgan are depicted as really bad people who exploited the masses for their own personal benefit. There is probably some truth in this. I'll have to read more about each of these people before I decide what I think. I do think that there were economic problems when these men lived - that there were many people living in poverty and that education seemed to be a way to both improve the lives of these people and improve the nation's economic well-being. At the same time, I agree with Gatto in that public education is structured in a way to promote conformity and to discourage questioning minds. This, in my opinion, is not a good thing.

Education in America has been influenced by both the "innovators" and the "makers." Examining the history of America would not be thorough if it did not consider both of these influences. I will be curious to see if Gatto will acknowledge in any depth those individuals who have devoted their lives to improving the lives of others - people like Deborah Meier. To ignore those would seem to paint as biased a picture of the history of education as those studies that fail to mention the less-than-admirable motives of others who influenced educational policy.