Two Cheers for NCLB, and Questions for Professor Garrison

Abstract

Jim Garrison’s article (Garrison 2012, in this issue) critiques current reforms in the United States for fostering a harmful “standardization” in schooling, which threatens to further undermine the country’s democratic heritage and to prepare many students for servitude in an oppressive social order. John Dewey is cited throughout, as befits Professor Garrison’s scholarly background, although the argument consequently often proceeds from authority rather than evidence. It offered as a critical treatise and a broad historical thesis about the genesis and nature of the current reform regime. With respect to the latter, a number of assertions are made about “the new structural feudalism,” with “money managers” occupying positions of control in a globalizing economy. These are strong words, and they invite critical engagement regarding contemporary social, economic, and political conditions and the functions of schooling. One can ask, for instance, just what makes the current situation different from the past, when others made similar remarks. Observations about the commodification of people date at least to Karl Marx, and complaints about “moneyed” interests have resonated loudly in American history (Morris 2006). Indeed, Dewey expressed similar concerns in the 1920s, as Professor Garrison notes. How are today’s circumstances distinctive? The article’s principal object, of course, is standardization, although this too is never carefully defined. All schooling, after all, entails some degree of standardizing, as putting students into classrooms generally means a common curriculum and approach to learning. Factories influenced the early development of schools, and bureaucratic systems of control eventually came to