186 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0742561496
List price: $25

David Hursh has done what many before have tried and failed to do:  without sacrificing complexity, he has woven the many disparate strands contributing to the current crisis in education—historical, philosophical, economic, political—into a seamless whole.  There is not a single lapse in the logic of this book’s organization, and not a single sentence where jargon or convoluted sentence structure slows the reader down.   Readers at any level of expertise will profit from and—so unusual for such a scholarly text—enjoy this work.  Those who do not as yet understand why high stakes testing has been mandated despite its obvious harmful effects (isn’t it common knowledge by now that vomit bags and rubber gloves are routinely distributed with test booklets?) will, by the end of the book, have a deep and sophisticated understanding of the societal forces that have produced the perfect storm currently destroying teaching and learning in schools.  Those already well versed in the effects of neoliberal ideology will see in this work a model for how to help others understand what they already know. And wonderfully, while fully understanding what’s at stake in the current struggle, Hursh is not resigned.   The last chapter has both suggestions for and examples of citizens working together to throw off the NCLB chains shackling children, teachers, and administrators.

Early on, the author notes that “If schools are to create critical, reflective citizens…educators need to understand the larger social and historical context and realize that everything about educational goals and processes are both contested and political” (p. 24).  This is the task he sets himself, and his strategy for impact on the reader is to demonstrate with examples from his own experience how “personal troubles” link to “public problems.”  A working class student unexpectedly snatched from vocational education when he took an IQ test to get out of study hall, Hursh learned from his high school and university experiences how cultural capital and the class privilege disadvantage those in lower socioeconomic slots.  With the political climate of the 1960s added into the mix, by early adulthood Hursh was already considering how to combat the social injustices he was seeing.  Like many, he concluded that leverage for change might lie in education, though certainly a very different kind of education that was (and is) prevalent in public schools.

Through his skillful use of personal experience, Hursh models the awakening he clearly hopes to spark in readers: 

By calling for linking personal problems with social structures and engaging in ways to humanely deal with one another, I am also calling for a rebirth of the purposes of society and schooling. . . . I call for a citizenship and educational system that questions the increasing commodification of everything. (p. 25)

He moves from his own experience through the philosophy of John Dewey and then onto recounting his own goals and experiences working in and creating alternative schools.  Because he is forthright about his failures, a reader is inclined to trust his narrative—though his goals are so high that they might prompt doubt in the skeptical.  Here again his rhetorical strategy is right on target:  He offers several detailed examples of what students working in an genuinely free and democratic educational environment can accomplish.  For example, one student group designed and helped build a school playground; another created a PBS special on the local Metropolitan Area Planning Association, later used by the association to explain to citizens its purpose and accomplishments.  One particularly ambitious student did enough independent research and a large enough project so that he was able to become a highly successful independent film maker­—without a university degree.  Hursh’s examples are sufficiently wide-ranging and impressive to ease doubts about the ability of students at large to make good use of meaningful learning opportuonities.

To help explain the demise of Dewey’s progressive ideas in schools, Hursh moves to an examination of competing philosophies—especially scientific management and the social efficiency curriculum in it led to in schools.  From here he leads the reader steadily through an examination of the rise of neoliberalism, the decline of the welfare state, and the correlative impact of these developments on education.  Hursh makes it easy to see where high-stakes testing has come from, and he advances the reader’s practical understanding by describing testing effects at the state (in New York and Texas) and the federal (NCLB) levels.  Reminding the reader that these efforts are all part of a larger neoliberal strategy to privatize everything possible, Hursh and Pauline Lipman then present a chapter on Renaissance 2010, which they describe in the title as “The Reassertion of Ruling-Class Power through Neoliberal Policies in Chicago.”  This chapter makes clear that the dangers of neoliberalism to the citizenry at large, horrifying as they are in education, include a concerted effort to seize as much property and profit as possible from any assets the lower classes may still be clinging to.  (A similar effort, of course, is playing out in New Orleans.)

Only the book’s hopeful ending can fend off despair at the size and severity of what Hursh calls “The Real Crisis in Education.”  Luckily, it’s strong enough and practical enough to leave readers looking for ways to connect with larger oppositional groups rather than turning their back on the overwhelming challenge made clear in the earlier pages.

The book is a tour de force that belongs in every educator’s library.

Suggested Further Reading

Dewey, J.  (1963). Education and experience.  New York:  Macmillian/Collier (originally published in 1938).

Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nichols, S. L. and Berliner, D. B.  (2007).  Collateral damage:  How high-stakes testing corrupts America’s schools.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard Education Press.