On the list of issues that I’ve written the most about over the last 40 plus years, education and public schools are easily in the top 10, perhaps even the top five.
I’ve long believed that education is an essential part of the American experiment in democracy, that educating our kids to be citizens and productive members of society is a shared value in our country, and that public schools are the best way to teach the majority of our young people how to think.
In 1996 — in the midst of a flurry of concern for a growing disconnect from civic life as we’d known it for two centuries and an erosion of trust in long-respected institutions — then-Kettering Foundation President and Former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare David Mathews wrote a book titled “Is There a Public for Public Schools?” Nearly 20 years later, that question is more pertinent than ever, and the answer is just as complicated…