What’s at stake with the standards movement?: “[T]he kind of individuals we are developing and the kind of nation we wish to be”

The titular quote is from a new book by William A. Proefriedt, High Expectations: The Cultural Roots of Standards Reform in American Education; the video is from a review of that book in the Teachers College Record.

Proefriedt reminds us that the quest for quick and easy (or quick and dirty) standards and accountability has steamrolled a long tradition in America of striving for mass education that cultivates democratic ideals and full individual development while working against  “individual economic rapaciousness” as a danger to the Republic.  This is a tradition we don’t want to lose.

All the “business model” reformers and champions of “consumer interest” as a tool of reform (and that includes Sec. Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama) would do well to read Proefriedt and heed the wisdom of those he has written about.

See also: William A. Proefriedt, “Reading Emerson.”

Thomas J. Mertz