This is Everything

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my professio n is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised.

Helen Keller worked throughout her long life to achieve social justice; she was an integral part of many social movements in the 20th century. Yet today, she is remembered chiefly as a child who overcame the obstacles of being deaf and blind largely through the efforts of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. While she may be hailed as a “hero” in lesson plans for today’s children, the books recount only a fraction of what makes Helen Keller heroic.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the corporate reform movement is the way it has attached its agenda to the urgent needs of poor communities of color who have been badly served by the current system. The corporate reformers have successfully used deeply rooted inequalities in our society and a misleading narrative of failure to introduce market reform into public education.
But because they’ve also promised results and choices they cannot deliver, we can turn their accountability rhetoric back on them. We need to demand evidence that their market reform policies produce better outcomes for the majority of kids. And when they can’t, we need to use that absence of evidence to press for the reversal of the disruptive reforms they seek. And when their policies fail in one place, we need to share those results in their next target.

But of course, saying nothing conveys a message of its own—one that is, unfortunately, open to a wide array of interpretations. To the besieged gay or perceived-to-be-gay student, the teacher’s uncomfortable silence signals at best cowardice and, at worst, complicity with the bully. Meanwhile, the aggressor receives no punishment, so why stop? Silent condemnation teeters perilously close to tacit approva