CHEERS
Bob Greene tells how “a small-town civics teacher” named Harford Steele set John Glenn on the path to a lifetime of service:
In a short film produced by the government after Glenn’s 1962 journey around the planet, Steele said: “I taught Johnny and hundreds of others that our democracy is a priceless heritage, and that we should preserve, protect and if at all possible make some contributions to it.”
Not a lot of selfishness in those words; not a lot of bellicosity or bluster. They are words that sound quite welcome right now.
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MIT literature professor Joshua Bennett believes the age of AI calls for “a ‘Great Books’ revival”:
What we are trying to do is not just help ground students—the large majority of them scientists and engineers in training—in a humanistic research program, but to identify irreplaceable ideas during a time of accelerated change.
JEERS
Google announced this week that schools can opt out of AI, but that the choice will also block students from using its ubiquitous search engine. “The company’s new strategy underscores Google’s powerful role in American education,” report Dana Goldstein and Natasha Singer. Former FTC chair Lina Khan calls the move coercive, and Morgan Polikoff warns that the decision could further fuel anti-tech sentiment among parents and educators.
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Adriana Aviles, a New York City parent, watched her son earn high grades in math for years, only to learn that his public elementary and middle schools left him unprepared for high school math. “Had my son’s teachers just told me he was having trouble,” she writes, “we could have gotten him the help he needed early on. He would have done the work. But we were never told that. And the grades never gave us a clue.” She’s now concerned that New York’s move away from the Regents exams will leave more families in the dark.
Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation. Click here to subscribe for sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates, curated commentary from across the ed-policy world, and lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback.
