I’m a true believer in self-education, and now this should be easier than ever, but is it? It’s so easy to just use AI without much thought that it’s frightening. How much knowledge do we need to have in our memories? How much do we want to have? How do you define and measure knowledge not just facts? (I’m writing a book on it.) And what about wisdom?

Diane Ravitch, America’s premiere education historian, evaluates broadly popular ideas for restructuring schools, and explains why they have had no positive impact on the quality of American education.  She reveals her skepticism regarding charter schools, privatization, accountability, and the philanthropists who are trying to control school reform using business models for school planning. Ravitch has written or edited more than twenty books, including The Language Police, The Great School Wars, The Troubled Crusade, The American Reader, The English Reader, and Left Back.

See her book on The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education and the work of the late John Taylor Gatto who was quite vehement. As far as I know he allows this Internet Archive of his book, with a new version out. https://archive.org/details/JohnTaylorGattoTheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducationBook

Christian Science Monitor
“Ravitch has had enough of fly-by-night methods and unchallenging requirements. She’s impatient with education that is not personally transformative. She believes there is experience and knowledge of art, literature, history, science, and math that every public school graduate should have.”

Also see her book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.  “We must take care not to reestablish a dual school system, with privately managed charters for the most motivated, most able students and public schools as the repositories for those unable to get into the charter system… To reduce the achievement gap, we must reduce the opportunity gap… Protecting our public schools against privatization and saving them for future generations of American children is the civil rights issue of our time.” The Reign of Error (not complete copy)