A Fight Worth Fighting, a Fight Worth Winning

Losing one's mother naturally makes a person reflect on the really important things. The author was reminded that when faced with the Great Question, which even the best schools cannot handle competently, all other questions can seem trivial, and it's tempting to back away from them. But the "lesser" questions schools mishandle can have a terrible impact on young lives, and suffering great loss can also make one profoundly impatient with half-measures, dodges, and baloney when one is fighting for serious stakes. Nowadays, lots of educators are unusually discouraged. The emphasis now is on leaving no child behind. Instead of helping every kid go beyond "adequate" and toward excellence, the resources are squandered holding kids down to minimal "standards." No Child Left behind often means that no child gets ahead. In this article, the author stresses the need for "informed parental participation," as well as for "principled teacher nonparticipation" in getting the attention of Georgia's legislators and laying down their demands, which are all for the betterment of education. It would be much harder for politicians to evade the demands of thousands of teachers, especially when our nation is so evenly divided between competing theories of governance. (Contains 7 notes.)