Oliver Bateman Does the WorkVerified account

my dissertation was on education clauses in state constitutions + the history of school finance litigation, but i became disenchanted w/ that topic bc: a) nearly everyone involved w/ that "work" had an obv agenda (fund/defund the schools) b) the schools have always been "failing"

b) was by far the more fascinating of the two. almost since schooling began in the us, it has been decried by outside observers, even as it was hailed as "essential" or in need of reform. and nearly every reform - centralizing, decentralizing, testing, no testing - has "failed"

it was a subject that seemed amenable to no answers, just endless kvetching about having more of this and less of that. and, with the rise of "social science" data, any specific method or use of money could be revealed as unhelpful for "student outcomes." nothing worked

in spite of that, some kids "learned" anyway, which gave the koch-right a fairly foolproof "nothing matters except the parents" argument, which was inarguable but also not worthy of argument, since the point was to move students past that

eventually i read j ranciere's "the ignorant schoolmaster" and concluded that was the answer: "universal teaching was not a method for instructing the people; it was a benefit to be announced to the poor; they could do everything any man could. It sufficed only to announce it"

so, in my own classes, i began giving only "A" grades and quite deliberately tried to demonstrate that I was "emancipated" from "enforced stultification." this went over poorly with my bosses, yet I became more outspoken about this and more contemptuous of other methods