One of the biggest lies generated by critics of education reformers is our dismissal of the effects of poverty on children. This is a straw man, a canard devised to mask the cynicism prevalent among people who throw out lines like “too hard to teach” or “not everybody should go to college.”
And I can think of one prominent figure in particular who has erected enough straw men to populate a wheat field.
Recently, Diane Ravitch, a person who has yet to meet an education reform she didn’t used to like, gave a talk at the Lehigh University College of Education.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a talk so much as an imaginary debate with a character of her own creation dubbed “Mr. Reformer.” It brings to mind the condescending stunt pulled off by Clint Eastwood at the 2012 Republican National Convention when he addressed an empty chair onstage filled by an invisible President Obama.
Ravitch’s “debate” was no less disingenuous, or in the words of a Lehigh education professor who attended the event, “her depiction of Mr. Reformer was superficial at best, disrespectful at worst.”
Then again, she was honest about this from the very beginning when she said, “It won’t be a fair debate because I will always get the last word.”