Is silence really golden?

01-19-2011

Blog by John Merrow/Huffington Post

While it's a cliché that democracy is not a spectator sport, the unfortunate reality is that our schools are not preparing students to be actively engaged, responsible citizens. Education has a public purpose: to enable citizens to use their full intellectual and emotional potential to live as productive, interactive members of a community. Shouldn't schools prepare students for the deliberative processes that democracy requires, including collaborative, informed action? And democracy is not a spectator sport. "Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5000 years," wrote the great educator W.E.B. DuBois in 1949, "the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental...The freedom to learn...has been bought by bitter sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn, the right to have examined in our schools not only what we believe, but what we do not believe; not only what our leaders say, but what the leaders of other groups and nations, and the leaders of other centuries have said." (more…)

Also: Huffington Post

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