Physician, Heal Thyself

Under the title “Say What You Mean,” Kevin Carey writes that

Every school reform advocate I know — and I know my share — absolutely wants better social and economic environments for children, and thinks that doing so would help their education. You’d have to be dead stupid to believe otherwise.

Indeed, he continues, the advocates of the Broader, Bolder Approach are contending with “a phantom” when they make the argument that such measures are essential for improving the educational opportunities, as well as the overall quality of life, of students living in poverty.

Funny thing is, we keep running into this phantom in the edu-blogosphere. Take, for example, here and here where the claim is made that there is no evidence to support the proposition that only the “dead stupid” deny, even in the face of comments that provide that evidence again and again. The phantom has even taken the form of Jay Greene, who not only endorses the claim that there is no evidence for the proposition that only the “dead stupid” deny, but invokes images of totalitarianism — posters from the Stalinist Soviet Union and the use of a Hobbesian term [Behemoth] most famous as the title of a classic text analyzing Nazi Germany — in his commentary on the issue. Given the quality of the argument and the tone of the rhetoric that defines the interventions of this phantom, we can understand why reasonable folks like Kevin might want to separate themselves from it. But separation seems to us a tad bit different from pretending that it doesn’t exist.

So before Kevin suggests that the advocates of the Broader, Bolder Approach must have some hidden, ulterior motivation for taking the position they do, since they are arguing against some sort of ’straw man’ phantom, he might actually venture a comment or two about the arguments of that phantom. In this case, the admonition “say what you mean” invites the rejoinder, “physician, heal thyself.”

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