"Whether the governor of a besieged place should go out to parley"

The question, I suppose, contains within it a kind of inverted echo of Machiavelli, who might have asked instead "whether a ruler should give his general leave to parley with the governor of a besieged place." Montaigne's concluding answer to his own question—

I put my trust easily in another man's world. But I should do so reluctantly whenever I would give the impression of acting from despair and want of courage rather than freely and through trust in his honesty.

—suggests, perhaps, that he is less interested in the political question than the personal one. As am I, though I am less capable of separating the two when the acts of legislators directly affect my day-to-day work as a teacher.

The observation that John Dewey's great insight in Democracy and Education was the social nature of education cannot be repeated enough during these dark days of rapacious capitalism. The argument that public education needs more competition—an argument advanced by education policymakers from President Obama on down—makes about as much sense as saying that religions or families need more competition. In religion, as in education, I could do with a lot more cooperation and a lot less competition. And while I am not at all certain what an ideal family would look like, I'm fairly certain that increased competitiveness is not the optimal way to achieve it.

Not surprisingly, the ideal that policymakers now invoke for education "reform" hails from Finland—a country whose education system features the kind of wrap-around social services we can only dream about in our state. One can only marvel at the ability of reformist apologists to point to the Finnish example as a justification for privatizing education. I suppose that if Coca Cola can co-opt the peace movement with an advertising jingle, then some of the world's richest capitalists can co-opt Finland's tiny socialist experiment in education.

A colleague recently argued that we should try to "build bridges" to a state legislator with a long record of favoring privatization of public education. As a citizen of a besieged place, I have no interest in going out to parley with the enemy. I would not want to give the impression of acting from despair and want of courage.