Stories From and About Education

As we slide into tribalism it is in part because we have lost faith in our democracy and this loss of faith, in part, stems from our failure to keep the promise of universal education for all of our citizens. We are abandoning public education which seeks to inform students about the history and common activities of their country. We are being bombarded with political ideologies, conspiracy theories and outright lies but not giving our citizenry the intellectual tools to develop what Postman and Weingarten called "the crap finder." We have moved from educational ideologies that suppressed individuality and demanded conformity to the idea that the creative individual is the only valid goal of education. We now see all education as job training forgetting that the liberal arts empower individuals to live rich meaningful lives.