Two Voices for Humanist Education

Delighted to find two more media voices in support of humanist education. Please visit the New York Times Opinion piece by David Brooks, who you might recognize from his appearance with Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour.

Then there is our own Rick Salutin, who began, on Saturday, a series about education and strikes similar notes about the destructive nature of Quality Management and measurement in education. Rick writes in part about Finland, some months after that country hit the news with its superlative educational results - and get this - without a testing and standardization regime. (The irony of this achievement being reported in terms of international test results is not lost on this reader, mind you.)

I'd just add that for a good introduction at least to how our current mess has evolved from perverse notions of "reason" after the enlightenment, do read John Ralston Saul's Voltaire's Bastards - and other of this works. He's onto the same cultural problem we are facing in schools.