Welcome
Why did Diane do it? Find out in this week’s CommenTerry … and follow me on Twitter @TerryStoops.
Bulletin Board
- The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a workshop, "The Truth About Wind Power on the Coasts of North Carolina," on Monday, December 5, at 7:00 p.m. at the Burney Ballroom A, University of North Carolina at Wilmington. An encore workshop will be held on Tuesday, December 6, at 7:00 p.m. at Joslyn Hall on the campus of Carteret Community College in Moorehead City. Experts Daren Bakst, John Droz Jr., and David W. Schnare will present "an alternative view of wind power and what it would mean to North Carolina’s coastal communities." The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
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The John Locke Foundation invites you to a Headliner Luncheon on Thursday, December 15, at noon at Sisters Garden in Raleigh. Tim Carney, senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner, will discuss "Big Business and Big Government vs. The Free Market." For more information, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
- The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle-school and high-school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project web site for further information.
- Visit JLF’s research newsletter archive and follow me on Twitter @TerryStoops.
CommenTerry
In the opening pages of her most recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (now available in paperback), education historian and commentator Diane Ravitch declares that her newly discovered "doubt and skepticism" about the benefits of testing, accountability, and school choice are "signs of rationality."
For Ravitch, however, those of us in the education reform community are not entitled to doubt and skepticism about her ideas. Such was the gist of a recent piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks observed that Ravitch "is quick to accuse people who disagree with her of being frauds and greed-heads." Brooks is right, but I would take it one step further. Her irrational, dismissive, and ornery demeanor suggests that she has become pathos incarnate, void of the logos or ethos that would make her recent "change of heart" credible to anyone, save naive public school teachers and sundry class warriors.
So that gets to the most important question of all. Why did Diane Ravitch block me (@TerryStoops on Twitter) from her Twitter account (@DianeRavitch)?
For the uninitiated, Twitter is "an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as ‘tweets’." Users post messages to Twitter instantly, allowing "followers" to carry on conversations in real-time. Users have the ability to block spammers, bullies, and policy analysts from receiving and sending tweets to them. Diane Ravitch had every right to block any of her thousands of Twitter followers for any reason, including the preservation of an echo chamber.
By the way, follow me @TerryStoops. Only someone like Diane Ravitch would object to my tweets, which, experts agree, are as charming and delightful as a bowl of marshmallow whip.
While you are at it, follow the John Locke Foundation and Carolina Journal. Did I mention my JLF/CJ colleagues Sam Hieb, Fergus Hodgson, Sara Burrows, Roy Cordato, Jon Sanders, David Bass, Mitch Kokai, Becki Gray, Rick Henderson, Tara Servatius, and Jon Ham are also in Twitter? Follow the whole gang for the best political and social commentary available in 140 characters or fewer.
Back to the matter at hand. Perhaps Ravitch took offense to my response to one of her November 13 tweets:
DianeRavitch: @teach4america @irasocol Numbers are shadows in Plato’s Cave. Not real. Real is what you see, observe, what humans do, not representations.
TerryStoops: I’ll let my bank know…MT @DianeRavitch: @teach4america @irasocol Numbers are shadows in Plato’s Cave. Not real….
OK, maybe that response was a little too sarcastic. But I wanted to make the point that numbers matter, regardless if we are talking about education or banking. Of course, I would have been happy to participate in a discussion about the ontological status of mathematics and statistics, but Ravitch was not interested in a philosophical discussion. She seldom is.
On the same day, there was the following exchange:
DianeRavitch: @topdownreformer The reformers’ "business model" reflects thinking of 1915.
TerryStoops: @DianeRavitch 1915? Your government model reflects thinking of 1837.
I assumed that Ravitch chose 1915 because it was the year that William Henry Maxwell, then superintendent of schools in New York City, launched a critique of John Franklin Bobbitt’s "scientific" theory of education. Bobbitt was a misguided social efficiency Progressive who believed that manufacturing or factory processes could be adapted to the classroom.
I politely pointed out, using fewer than 140 characters, that Ravitch’s ideology reflected the thinking of 1837. Surely, an education historian like Ravitch identified that as the year that "common school" proponent Horace Mann became secretary of education in Massachusetts. Anyway, taking a cue from Ravitch, I plan to respond to all two of my critics by saying things like, "That kind of thinking is so June 12, 1996. Take that, sucka."
Apparently, Ravitch had enough of my doubt and skepticism — what she called "the signs of rationality." A few days later, I discovered that Ravitch blocked me from receiving tweets from (and responding to) her Twitter messages. She didn’t even say goodbye.
Did I mention that you can follow me @TerryStoops and my tweets are as charming and delightful as a bowl of marshmallow whip?
Random Thought
In the words of Mad Magazine cartoonist Don Martin, I feel like "Shif-Shaf Shabamp Mamp Shompah-Bombah Dimpah Mimpah Fomp-Dabomp! Gadiff-Gadiff Gadaff Gadaff Gasmitch Gasmatch Kaboff Fapadda Dapadda Swipadda Dipadda Fap Spmap Gamop" about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.
Facts and Stats
Profile of Diane Ravitch on Twitter (as of 8:00 AM on November 22):
21,876 — Tweets
713 — Following
22,089 — Followers
1,346 — Listed
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
SOS — Save Our Schools
Quote of the Week
"And these days, Ravitch wants to be the Camille Paglia of education traditionalists without either the latter’s intellectual curiosity, scholastic rigor, or skillfulness in bombast. It is why she discredits herself with every tweet, proves herself incapable of offering cogent arguments with The Death and Life of the Great American School System (a weak attempt at being both the Paglia and the Jane Jacobs of education), and costs herself credibility with pieces such as a column she wrote last year for the Wall Street Journal that would be graded an F by any respectable education historian."
— RiShawn Biddle, "Diane Ravitch Doesn’t Deserve to Be Taken Seriously," Dropout Nation, November 15, 2011.
Click here for the Education Update archive.
