What Are Public Schools For?

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2017

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The idea that public schools are failing is one of the most commonly heard complaints in American society. But what are they failing to do? Surveys of American parents—and the history of the nation's public education system—tell a more complicated story. In this episode, The Atlantic's education editor Alia Wong joins Jeff, Matt, and Alex for a conversation about how we define and measure success in public education. We’d like to hear your stories about education: public, private, school-of-hard-knocks, you name it. Call us up at (202) 266-7600 and leave us a voicemail with your story and your answer to the question, “What is public education for?” Don't forget to leave your contact info. For links and other show notes, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Fall is back to school season and while kids are starting classes adults are lamenting the
0:06.2	abysmal state of public education in America. Are public schools failing our
0:10.8	kids or have we forgotten their purpose? This is Radio Atlantic. Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, executive editor of The Atlantic, and with me in the studio today is A Leo Wong,
0:35.4	our education editor.
0:36.6	Hello, Aelia.
0:37.5	Hey Matt, how are you?
0:39.3	I'm doing well.
0:40.0	How are you?
0:40.6	I'm good, thank you.
0:42.2	We are for the moment without my co-host, Jeff and Alex,
0:47.0	but they will be back to join us in the second part of this conversation.
0:51.0	So is it actually too late to have a conversation about back to school?
0:56.0	No, I'm giving you a pass since it's the whole month we'll consider it back to school season and it's still summer technically so. Yes, and we are to be
1:04.3	fair always you and I are always talking about
1:07.0	always back to school season and like pedagogical jargon
1:09.7	we're talking about like social emotional learning
1:12.1	great stem steam
1:14.9	the every student succeeds I ESA I love all the acronyms. Me too. But I recently realized that I think all of these kind of
1:28.8	of jargony debates, these fiercely argued policy debates come down to one basic big hairy question.
1:37.0	What are schools for? And in particular, what are public schools for? I came to this realization after reading this essay
1:46.7	by the educator and education scholar Erica Christakis in our October issue called the War on Public Schools and in this story
1:55.9	she points out that sometimes it seems like there's only one thing Americans can
	...

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