Quite some time ago, someone sent me a copy of “Education and Moral Values: Seeking a New Bottom Line“, an article from a magazine titled Tikkun. Their Web site will tell you that tikkun means “to heal, repair, and transform the world.” However, while I appreciate their use of the serial comma, that’s not really what the article is about.
Really, the article is about pushing a certain ideology on schools, calling for teachers to “encourage students to reflect on the spiritual emptiness of [our] culture.”
The idea that there is a “spiritual emptiness” in our culture is a biased interpretation of the world. And anything that involves the word “spiritual” being tied into education frightens me to the utmost extent.
There are so many writers who do a fair job of pointing out what is wrong with the current public education system. It’s not very hard to do, though, so saying that a person does a good job of finding those flaws isn’t really saying much. But I’m getting tired of reading articles about education reform in pop media or media with a particularly strong ideological slant. Tikkun certainly falls into that last category.
It seems to me that all these people writing about education reform are simply using that as a veiled excuse to encourage public schools to agree with, support, and foist their political or religious agendas on students (and teachers).
In the article from Tikkun magazine, Svi Shapiro subtitles one section “Challenge the Status Quo,” something that obviously resonates with me; just look at the top of the page (and no, I hadn’t read the article when I titled this blog). However, the article actually does not challenge that status quo. Instead, it pushes education toward a parochial view of the world and that seems rather like what’s happening now, rather like the status quo.
For an article in a Jewish publication to promote a Jewish education system does not seem like a challenge to the system at all. Remember the intended audience: those that already agree with Shapiro’s ideology.
George Will’s Newsweek editorial is just the latest in a series of supposed education reform articles that do not tackle the issues from anything other than a party line. Rather, these articles use education reform as a chance to state how great their religious or political affiliation’s ideas are and as a chance to put those affiliation’s ideas into the public education system. “See how great it would be if every school in the nation taught Reagonomics?” “See how great it would be if every school taught about how evil Wal-Mart is?”
If you are interested in education reform, stop reading magazines that are not dedicated to education reform. Don’t read a little blurb in USA Today and feel like you are an informed citizen, ready to take on the education reform debate. The articles in those magazines are there merely to make you feel self-righteous or indignant.
And neither of those feelings actually promote change in the public education system.