CITIZENS FIRST :

Apropos my letter to the editor in a prior post, here's a review of a new book Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society, Edited by Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti (Richard D. Kahlenberg, American Prospect) that makes some of the same points.

Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti, professors at New York University who support voucher programs, have produced an edited volume of essays, Making Good Citizens, that challenges the conventional view that public education is vital to the nation's civic health. The collection includes an impressive array of authors, not all of whom are explicit advocates of private-school choice, but whose essays, taken as a whole, make an audacious three-part argument that public support for private schools will strengthen democracy in America. The argument's components are that (1) public schools do not produce the populace of critical thinkers that a democracy requires; (2) public education no longer does a good job of assimilating diverse students; and (3) private schools do a better job than public schools of promoting the vibrant civil society that is so important to democracy's success.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2002 9:30 PM