This article just appeared on the website of The New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/01/11/their-kind-of-indoctrination/ It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education. NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals. If you subscribe to NYRB, you can ..read more

Repeat after me: The school choice movement began in response to the Brown Decision of 1954. School choice was a euphemism for using public dollars to fund segregation academies for whites, to enable them to escape anticipated desegregated schools. Steve Suitts wrote an excellent book about the history of school choice, called Overturning Brown: The ..read more

Peter Greene reminds us of an important anniversary that we should have commemorated: the arrival of 6-year-old Ruby Bridges at the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, where she was the first Black child. She had to walk through crowds of screaming whites, mostly women, who didn’t want her to integrate the school. She ..read more

Peter Greene asks how teachers can insist on honesty and evidence when the new president exemplifies the success of their opposites. Please open the link and read the article in full. He writes: We are already talking about the worst, ugliest, most misogynistic and racist impulses that will be boosted by Trump’s election. But for ..read more

I have been puzzling over this question since the Democratic National Convention. Like most people, I didn’t know much about Kamala Harris when she became Vice President. Now that I have seen her speak, now that I saw her debate Trump, I feel very energized to support her campaign for the Presidency. She is smart ..read more

Our reader who goes by the pen name “Democracy” left the following comment on recent events. We are familiar with Trump’s racist, enophobic outbursts. He has no problem with immigration from Europe but is apoplectic about immigration from nonwhite countries. The usual word for this is racism. How do other Republicans react to Trump’s overt ..read more

Jonathan V. Last is the lead editor of The Bulwark, the Never Trumper blog and one of the best political blogs. He wondered whether Republicans in Springfield will vote for Trump after the venom he and Vance have directed at their town.He quotes from a Wall Street Journal article that dashed all of the spurious ..read more

Linda Ronstadt, one of the greatest singers of our time, posted her endorsement in the 2024 Presidential campaign. “Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say ..read more

Donald Trump is incredulous that Kamala Harris is both Indian and black. He ridiculed before an audience of black journalists for “turning black,” presumably to advance her career. The claim is false and bigoted. It says more about Trump than it does about Kamala. JD Vance endorsed Trump’s insulting statement, saying that Kamala is a ..read more

After telling the National Association of Black Journalists that Kamala Harris “turned black” and that she used to portray herself as Indian, Trump was roundly criticized for raising the issue of her race. Kamala is the daughter of an India-born scientist and a Jamaica-born father who is an economist. She has never denied her biracial ..read more