Big shoutouts to my man A-Rus for his post on Whitney Tilson's bile-laden assault on Linda-Darling Hammond. According to Tilson, "She is about as bad as it gets in terms of education reform." He sums up by writing:I think that Linda Darling-Hammond is little more than a thinly disguised shill for the teachers unions and that her ideas, if adopted, would likely result in much higher spending and little or no improvement in our schools.
This isn't the first time Tilson has gone after ed schools. Apparently, from a screening of "Two Million Minutes" at Harvard Grad School of Ed., we can generalize about all graduate schools of education: "What a pathetic collection of Mad Hatter's Tea Parties these schools are!" (See Bob Compton's posting and Tilson's commentary here.)
Edu-profs - I guess the cat is out of the bag: Linda Darling-Hammond is heading up your coven. And her wicked rules? All ed school grads have to memorize the Communist Manifesto and stop shaving their legs. At convocation, they sacrifice an investment banker, drink his blood, and then kiss Reg Weaver's ring. And then the real Mad Hatter's Tea Party begins...
In all seriousness, it would be more productive if ed reformers learned to critique and play with a modicum of civility. (See "Attack the ideas, not the idea haver" here.)
If you want to read something more thoughtful about ed schools, try David Labaree's The Trouble with Ed Schools, which attempts to explain why ed schools are everyone's preferred punching bag. But he's part of the coven (Stanford Grad School of Ed), too, so beware.
3 comments:
Tilson is as qualified to make ed judgments as I am to run his hedge fund. Actually, I'm more qualified. I own stock. I have an idea, let a teacher manage his stock portfolio - or maybe Joel Klein who would do better at that than managing the NYC schools.
When I teach persuasive writing, I tell my students that attacks are only good for energizing the base, not actually persuading people to change their beliefs or behavior.
Reforming ed schools is one of my interest areas, so thanks for the book suggestion.
Thanks! Though I think "coven" is the inappropriate collective noun for those of us in Ed Schools (and insulting to Wiccans). If Tilson had really wanted to call us names, he should use some other possibilities: a Congress of faculty, a playground of educationists, ... or maybe a neoliberal of ed schools.
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