When challenged, the natural inclination of the education establishment (The Empire) is to suppress dissent. They prefer matters to be decided by small groups of selected elites behind closed and they certainly don’t want critical ideas to be given a full and open hearing.
With that in mind, you should know that Twitter has suspended the account of Old Diane Ravitch. In case you missed it, some genius was “Tweeting” under the name of Old Diane Ravitch, quoting the writings of Diane Ravitch before she underwent her tranformation. Old Diane Ravitch (ODR) would send “tweets” that were in direct contradiction to the “tweets” that current Diane Ravitch is sending.
The point of this was not to show that Ravitch has changed her mind, which anyone can do when presented with new information. The point of ODR was to show that Ravitch’s current bold declarations are just as shallow and unsupported as were her old declarations — just in the opposite direction. Since Twitter seems to consist of little more than a series of shallow and ill-thought-out declarations, it was the perfect medium to showcase the silliness of both the current and past incarnations of Diane Ravitch.
But the Empire struck back. Someone, perhaps Diane herself, must have complained to Twitter and they have suspended ODR’s account. ODR emailed me via an ODR Gmail account to provide the text of an appeal to Twitter to reverse the suspension. ODR rightly observed:
These followers and the other 200+ followers of this account know that this account is not operated by Diane Ravitch, but rather is aimed to entertain by tweeting quotes from her earlier writings (the sources of which are clearly documented by links contained in the tweets). Thus, this account is not “impersonating” a real individual (as would be prohibited by the Twitter Rules) any more than the fake Mayor Emanuel was impersonating the real Rahm Emanuel. Additionally, the account has never been used in a manner that is threatening, demeaning, or disrespectful in any way.
We’ll have to see whether this appeal works but I am not very optimistic. Twitter makes a lot of money from people like Diane Ravitch who tweets about 70 times per day to her more than 13,000 cult members, er, I mean followers. On the other hand, Twitter, like all social media, can rapidly lose their mostly young and anti-authoritarian customers if they start acting like heavy-handed jerks who suppress open communication.
In another example of how the Empire likes to operate, I received an e-mail yesterday from Eugenia Kemble from the Shanker Institute that reveals the establishment’s preference for discussions among small groups of selected elites behind closed doors. Kemble was responding to a mass email originally sent by Mike Petrilli to dozens of education “analysts,” think-tankers, reporters, congressional staffers, and Department officials. Several people replied to all and the debate was being continued by mass email.
Eugenia, whose union-backed think tank issued the Manifesto in support of national curriculum, decided to weigh-in but added to the bottom of her reply: “Note to All: This is a private email and not for publication, quotation or circulation beyond those to whom it is addressed.” No one in the exchange of mass emails had previously requested or could have reasonably expected that their comments would be private. The list included a bunch of reporters as well as public officials whose emails are subject to Freedom of Information requests.
Inserting that note revealed Kembel’s and the establishment’s preferred method of operation. Keep debates limited and secret. Happily the debate over the nationalization of standards, curriculum, and assessments is out in the open and no matter how hard Kembel tries, she can’t bottle it back up.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 