‘Class Dismissed’

By Serena Golden

It’s no secret that this country has an education problem. Whether pre-K or post-grad, the consensus is clear: we need more and better education. Too few students make it through high school, and fewer still make it through college; in any case they are not learning enough, or they are not learning the right things in the right way. The child left behind in school will never go to college, and the child who doesn’t go to college becomes the adult who will never attain a reasonably well-paying job. Education, then, is the key to prosperity — for individual workers and for the nation that comprises them.

But wait.

Is it possible that this ubiquitous narrative results from a sort of tunnel vision? That education isn’t the best solution to poverty or economic inequality — that it may not even be a solution at all?

Continued at: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/26/new_book_on_why_education_can_t_solve_poverty_and_inequality

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