Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

by J. Martin Rochester

Book Overview

Western societies are divided more clearly than ever before into the haves and the have-nots, the needy and the greedy. In addition, neoliberal doctrines have been reshaped into more effective instruments of oppression and domination. Through a fascinating dialogue with long-time collaborator and fellow activist David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky explores this growing economic and social crisis, arguing that it is now acceptable political discourse to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594030448
• ISBN13: 9781594030444
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Great book

I teach at both the college and high school level. This book tells the story about why public education is failing.

An Outstanding Analysis of The Failure of Public Education

I highly recommend this well thought out and well researched book.The only fault that I can find with it is that it completely misses the root of all these educational problems.That root is the insidious efforts of American Marxists to weaken America in any way they can. Their motivation for this is that they hate America and everything it stands for, which is essentially a Free Enterprise economic system and a Liberal Democratic form of government. They also hate America because it is the rock upon which the great Socialist obscenities of the twentieth century (Naziism, Communism, Fascism) foundered. Finally, they hate America because, in the nineties, the example of its tremendous economic success finally discredited all forms of Socialism, even the relatively benign "third way."The main strategy that these American Marxists have followed has been to infiltrate and take over as many American institutions as possible. This strategy was first developed by the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. American Marxists have brilliantly succeeded in carrying out this strategy, and the corruption of American institutions, values, and culture by Marxist ideology is already far advanced. One example is the total destruction of academic freedom in America. If you are an American educator, and you don't "tow the Marxist line," you will be subjected to endless harrassment, condemnation, and ostracism. In this, the American Marxists are merely following in the footsteps of their Communist, Nazi, and Fascist brethren.The takeover of public education has been an especially important goal for these Marxists. Not only could they use their control of this institution to weaken America by continuously lowering the quality of its public education, but also they could use it as a platform for indoctrinating the young with their despicable ideology.I hope that this fine book can act as at least one of the catalysts for initiating a political and social movement that has the purpose of wresting control of American public education, and indeed of a wide array of American institutions, away from these anti-American ideologues.

Telling the sad, unvarnished truth

This book exposes the truth about the dumb policies that are ruining our public schools and the power plays that prevent anyone from injecting a little reality into the situation. Parents who want to help improve their local schools ought to read this book first. While the federal government is worried about the terrible schools in the inner cities, the suburban schools are gradually eliminating any pressure for academic excellence at all. The author moved to the suburbs of St. Louis and worked hard to try to see that his children got a rigorous and demanding public school education. This is the story of the bad policies that are obstacles to excellence which spring up overnight like mushrooms in school systems all over our country. Ever wonder why underfunded, technologically behind, uninteresting, traditional Catholic schools are so much more effective at teaching academics? This book will help you see why. Read it and weep.

What's wrong with American education, and how to fix it

The United States spends more (per pupil) on education than any other country, yet our children learn less. It isn't getting any better. What are we doing wrong?Martin Rochester gives the answer. American K-12 education is dominated by schools of education. Originally created in the late 19th Century to meet a need for minimally qualified teachers when primary education became universal, schools of education have survived as a second-class version of higher education, attracting the weakest college students, and teaching them vapid (or plainly nonsensical) ``theories of education'' rather than real subjects like English, history or mathematics.Worse, the schools of education and their faculty and graduates dominate the credentialing process, which every state requires of its public school teachers. In the 19th century credentialing served to ensure that teachers were minimally literate and numerate; now it has made education into a closed guild controlled by the schools of education. To obtain a credential a prospective teacher must take numerous education courses which indoctrinate her with the values of the education establishment, but which are so time-consuming that they preclude her getting a real education, and keep graduates with serious bachelors degrees from becoming teachers.The education establishment does even more harm. It is permeated with a variety of fuzzy ideologies (``progressive education'' is a name for some of them) which use attractive slogans (who wouldn't want a teacher to use the ``best practices'' or ``latest research'') but which are complete nonsense. Some of the ideologies and theories are without content (at least, they are hard to pin down), but in practice amount to excuses to avoid hard work (by either the students or the teachers) or honest evaluation. Sometimes ideology becomes an excuse for not concentrating on teaching the things children need to know: how to read and write, the facts of our culture (literature and history) and of the natural world (science and mathematics).Education professors build their careers on inventing innovations and selling them to schools. As a result the schools have to deal with a continual series of fads. Some of them are simply silly. For example, a ``theory'' called Multiple Intelligences states that athletic or musical talent is a kind of intelligence. These are certainly valuable talents, but why call them ``intelligence'', a term which has a different meaning? It is only confusing, like deciding to call a dollar a ``penny'' and a penny a ``dollar''. It wouldn't make us more prosperous. Good books are replaced by inferior ones simply for the sake of novelty.Other innovations make education worse, not better. ``New math'', based on an ed professor's fuzzy comprehension of set theory, managed to confuse a generation of pupils, teachers and parents. Set theory is a genuine and serious part of mathematics, but there is a good reason it is taught to mathematics m

A particularly readable and thought-provoking account

Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids And The Attack On Excellence by J. Martin Rochester (The Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science, University of Missouri-St. Louis) is an unflinching and documented account of contemporary conflicts across America concerning how reading, math, and other subjects are to be taught, how students should be tested, and other policy conflicts with respect to determining the future of the nation's young minds. Professor Rochester (having had his own fair share of scrapes with educators and policy makers as the parent of school-age children), offers both a personal as well as an analytical look at these divisive educational issues. Class Warfare is recommended for being a particularly readable and thought-provoking account which will of informative value for those with an interest in the current educational issues on national, state, and local levels.