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Notebook: School Bells

Lapham, Lewis H.
Publisher:  Harper's Magazine
Year Published:  2000  
Resource Type:  Article

A criticism of the American education system as well as politicians "attempts" to improve it.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The expression of alarm I take to be a matter of pious ritual, like a murmuring of prayers or the beating of ornamental gongs. If as a nation we wished to improve the performance of the schools, I assume we could do so. Certainly we possess the necessary resources. We are an energetic people, rich in money and intelligence, capable of making high-performance auto-mobiles and venture-capital funds, and if our intentions were anything other than ceremonial, I don't doubt that we could bring the schools to the standard of efficiency required of a well-run amusement park. Over the last twenty years we have added $10 trillion to the sum of the national wealth, cloned monkeys, reconfigured the weather, multiplied (by factors too large to calculate) the reach and value of the Internet.

Why, then, do the public schools continue to decay while at the same time the voices of the proctors poking through the wreckage continue to rise to the pitch of lamentation of the dead?

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