I've been following education writer Jennifer Berkshire on Twitter for a while, but I only started listening to the podcast Have You Heard fairly recently. She co-creates it with education historian Jack Schneider. Together, they are also co-authors of the book A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of Public School.
Their most recent episode is called Digging Deep into the Education Wars, and though it's an hour and 40 minutes long, this interview with the two of them (originally from another podcast) is worth a full listen because it gives a complete background on the last 40 years of K–12 education reform (so-called) and how it has played out in Republican and Democratic politics.
I've known for years that no mainstream national politician was anywhere close to correct about education, and this podcast tells me why that is. I already knew part of it from things I've picked up from Diane Ravitch and others, but this episode and a few others I've listened to recently put it together.
Berkshire and Schneider tie in the recent election of Brandon Johnson in the Chicago mayoral election as a hopeful sign, and that seems right to me. There's a lot of bad stuff happening in education right now, with book-banning and teacher-demoralizing and fake right-wing grassroots parent groups and voucherization... so it was good to hear that they see at least the beginning of "backlash to the backlash."
I know I've said podcasts are not a great fit for my life, but this is one to find the time for.
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