Deborah Meier on Education

At Bridging Differences, Deborah Meier wrote a post titled Keep Your Eyes on the Money. Here's the bit I want to follow:

My friend Vito Perrone in the closing essay of Roots of Open Education in America (1976) reminded us that,100 years earlier, most Americans dropped out of school before 5th grade. In the Dakotas, half didn't even make it to 2nd grade and only 1 percent completed high school. Nationwide, people of color couldn't even start school! Perrone also reminded us (as you do, Diane) that the fight between centralization and decentralization goes way back, as do the arguments for and against field trips, lockstep curriculum, traditional readers, rote learning, and spelling bees. Small vs. large schools, ideas vs. skills vs. facts, and academia vs. vocationalism have had proponents and opponents over and over. But the context has changed—in 1820, most political decisions occurred close to home.