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PrintNovember 20, 2008
Ayres' Influence on Obama's Education Policies:The 'Education Debt'
Many have felt that the biggest and most significant part of the Bill Ayers-Barack Obama story was overlooked: Ayers' views on education and Obama's apparent approval of his noxious plan (for other peoples' children) of making whites pay to redress what Ayers thinks is an "education debt" to black children, redressing the disparity in black/white educational outcomes which Ayers argues is due to segregation.
Global Labor's Steve Diamond who was instrumental in uncovering the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ties of Ayers and Obama says Ayers is already weilding substantial influence in the transition.
Ayers' influence on the incoming Obama administration has quite likely made itself felt for the first time. The campaign today announced the appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as co-head of the Presidential transition policy team on Education.Darling-Hammond is a prominent and widely respected, though controversial, Professor of Education at Stanford. She shares with Ayers long time support for what I consider an authoritarian and ideological approach to education that includes advocacy of "social justice" teaching (not to be confused with support for social justice itself, mind you) and so-called "small schools."Ayers and Darling-Hammond share a deeply held view that race is critical to explaining problems in education. [snip] Ayers has also endorsed Darling-Hammond's call for whites to repay the "education debt" to people of color that has allegedly accumulated for centuries. Darling-Hammond said that repayment of the "education debt" should be the top priority of the next President. She contributed a chapter to a book edited by Ayers called "Education for Democracy."
