In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Bill
Keller notes that the 1989 fatwa against author Salmon Rushdie was never
about religion, but about political advantage. Similarly, argues Keller, the present upheaval in the
Middle East over a “cheesy anti-Muslim video” is neither spontaneous nor
religiously-motivated, but political organized.
I have been thinking the same thing about the apparently
bipartisan effort to “reform” the schools that seems to have begun with No
Child Left Behind but that probably must be traced back to A Nation at Risk and
even to Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act in the late 1950s. It’s not about the schools; it’s about
politics. It’s not about
lack of student achievement or about the need for choice; it’s about securing
political dominance for a peculiar version of a conservative political
position.
