I Once Made A Check Of All

There Has Been So Much Recent Talk Of Progress In The Areas Of Curriculum Innovation And Textbook Revision That Few People Outside The Field Of Teaching Understand How Bad Most Of Our Elementary School Materials Still Are.

Well, Teachers Have Been Profoundly Demoralized In Recent Years And Are Often Treated With Contempt By Politicians. There's A Great Deal Of Reckless Rhetoric In Washington About The Mediocrity Of The Teaching Profession - And I Don't Find That To Be True At All.

Many Of Us Regard Ourselves As Mildly Liberal Or Centrist Politically, Voice Fairly Pleasant Sentiments About Our Poor Children, Contribute Money To Send Poor Kids To Summer Camp, Feel Benevolent. We're Not Nazis; We're Nice People. We Read Sophisticated Books. We Go To Church. We Go To Synagogue. Meanwhile, We Put Other People's Children Into An Economic And Environmental Death Zone. We Make It Hard For Them To Get Out. We Strip The Place Bare Of Amenities. And We Sit Back And Say To Ourselves, "well, I Hope That They Don't Kill Each Other Off. But If They Do, It's Not My Fault.

I Do Get Scared About The Physical Danger From Drug Dealers. But It's Not In The Same League As The Danger I Feel Eating An $80 Lunch With My Privileged Friends To Discuss Hunger And Poverty. That's When My Soul Feels Imperiled.

In Public Schooling, Social Policy Has Been Turned Back Almost One Hundred Years.