Our prolific friend and colleague, AEI's Rick Hess, publishes more books than Borders stocks, and it would be exaggerated to say that every single one of them is a seminal contribution. But this one is genuinely important. Examining American education reform primarily through a historical lens?back to Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson?he shows how yesterday's assumptions about schools, teachers, systems, and structures endure into today's debates and how, most of the time, they function as shackles and blinders on contemporary efforts to re-invent our education system to meet tomorrow's demands. He depicts long-running battles between different visions, ideologies, and structural arrangements and shows how each typically stymies the other, how the conflict itself fails to escape the assumptions that each side brings to it, and how the occasional search for common ground is generally fruitless. ?The problem with [the quest] for ?middle ground' solutions,? Hess writes, ?is that this comfortable, appealing mantra too often summons new orthodoxies rather than questioning the old. The problem with seeking middle ground between champions and critics of the teacher unions, mayoral control, or standardized testing is that the easiest way to compromise is by leaving the old regularities intact and sprinkling in a handful of new resources, programs, and initiatives.? The result, of course, is that nothing much changes?even as we spend more and?add complexity to what was already an over-complicated system.?This book would be timely and valuable even if new resources were plentiful, but in an era that cries for substitution and replacement it's a very welcome wind through long-sealed doorways.
This piece originally appeared in this week's Education Gadfly. To subscribe to the Gadfly, click here.
?Chester E. Finn, Jr.
