Response to Glenn

Authors

  • Stephen Arons University of Massachusetts at Amherst

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v6n3.1998

Keywords:

Response, Academic Freedom, Bureaucracy, Censorship, Community Control, Cultural Influences, Educational Legislation, Elementary Secondary Education, Family School Relationship, Freedom of Speech, Moral Values, Public Education, Socialization

Abstract

Arons responds to what he considers to be Glenn's misrepresentations of the tone and content of Short Route To Chaos. He writes that Glenn "appears to be attempting to construct the book's message into just one more salvo fired in the endless school wars. It is anything but....Reading Glenn's review, one is left with the impression that the book is a Christian-bashing, left-leaning, work of communitarian fuzziness in which a legal scholar unaccountably refuses to confine himself to ... technical explication of existing constitutional doctrine." In his response, Arons affirmatively sets out some of the book's main themes of political /cultural conflict over standardized schooling, corrects some of what he sees as Glenn's misunderstandings, and notes that the book itself invites readers to eschew partisanship and recognize that there are deep structural problems in American public education. In closing, Arons uses an example of Glenn's partisan misunderstanding that leads Arons to recommend to the reader that it would be better to read Short Route to Chaos for oneself.

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Author Biography

Stephen Arons, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Stephen Arons, B.A. Univ. of Pa., J.D. Harvard, is professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a member of the Massachusetts Bar. For the past 25 years, Arons has been involved in issues of schooling, public policy, and constitutional law from a number of different perspectives. He was one of the founders of an alternative school for street youth, worked as a staff attorney concerned with civil rights at the Center for Law and Education, was an early participant in the federal study of school vouchers, wrote extensively about education policy for the Saturday Review and other magazines, has litigated issues ranging from state aid for private schooling to parental rights in home education, and has consulted for state and federal departments of education and legislative committees concerned with the constitutional implications of various school finance mechanisms. Arons has written numerous articles in professional journals and two books on schooling, culture, and the U.S. Constitution: Compelling Belief: The Culture of American Schooling (1986) and Short Route To Chaos: Conscience, Community, and the Re-Constitution of American Schooling (Univ. of Mass. Press, 1997).

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Published

1998-01-09

How to Cite

Arons, S. (1998). Response to Glenn. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 6, 3. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v6n3.1998

Issue

Vol. 6 (1998)

Section

Articles