WILL - Media Matters - April 08, 2012
Long time friend and colleague of Bob, John Nichols joins us in commemorating ten years of being on the air.
His most recent book, Uprising, captures the protest movement that captivated the nation and paved the path for Occupy Wall Street. More than 100,000 public employees, teachers, students, and their allies descended on the capital in Madison, Wisconsin after Governor Scott Walker announced his plan to eliminate the right of public sector employees to unionize. Uprising provides an anatomy of the event and its implications for the political future of the nation. As state legislatures across the US (in Ohio and New Hampshire, to name a few) take up union busting measures, Nichols shows how the Wisconsin case is a blueprint for progressives around America who've had enough. Uprising will be on of the thank you gifts to Media Matters supporters who contribute in the upcoming pledge drive.
Over the past decade, he has co-authored with Bob It's the Media, Stupid!, Our Media, Not Theirs, Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy and, most recently, The Death and Life of American Journalism. McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organizes the biennial National Conferences on Media Reform.
WILL - Media Matters - April 01, 2012
In The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch-former assistant secretary of education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum-examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today's most popular ideas for restructuring schools, including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.
Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. In addition, she is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She shares a blog called Bridging Differences with Deborah Meier, hosted by Education Week. She also blogs for Politico.com/arena and the Huffington Post. Her articles have appeared in many newspapers and magazines. Most recently her opinion piece, "Another Battle in the War Against Public Schools," ran in The New York Times.
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