Robert Pondiscio
Senior Fellow, AEI
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Robert Pondiscio
“Our earliest thinkers about public education saw schools as indispensable institutions, endowing America’s children with common knowledge, practical skills, civic dispositions and habits. We went to school to become Americans. Today, Eric Kalenze correctly observes, schools exist to provide the whole development of each individual child. The result is a kind of mission creep. We are doing too many things and none of them well. Current reform efforts are missing the mark badly, as did progressive education reform that preceded them. Kalenze’s wise book Education Is Upside Down describes how American education lost its way and its founding purpose—and how we might get them back.” (from Amazon)
Education Is Upside Down cuts through adjustments being made at technical levels of educational practice and accountability, challenging ideals and philosophies that have powered American Education for most of the last century. This book explains how and why long-standing approaches generate flawed instructional practices, flawed systemic reform efforts, and a fundamental misalignment between the educational institution and the society it is missioned to serve. Education Is Upside Down urges readers wishing to improve American Education to more carefully consider the institution’s central mission, challenge long-accepted truths of practice, and question current reform efforts and actions. In full, Education Is Upside Down resists the practitioner-vs.-reformer blame game, seeking ultimately to carefully untangle—not tighten by yanking on any single strand—the long-complicated knot of American Education.