https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/01/when-collaboration-is-capitulation/
In response to my article “Counterfeit Civics,” and in defense of Educating for American Democracy (EAD), Paul Carrese and James Stoner are not only eloquent but also persuasive on one important point: they personally uphold the good intentions of this plan to transform American education. Beyond that we enter into disagreements, both over the general intellectual tenor of EAD and what the alternatives to it might be. They also attribute to me several views that I do not hold.
But let’s start with a point of easy agreement. Carrese and Stoner urge that “Conservatives should read the Educating for American Democracy documents for themselves, not be led by repeated caricatures that give no indication of having studied and digested the entire project.” I agree. In fact, I provided links to those documents in my article for American Greatness and called for a “close” reading of the same. Anyone who recognizes the importance of this major public policy proposal really should devote the time to read it in its entirety, including the footnotes, and not just the Roadmap, but also the full report.
Better still would be to go further by digging into some of the source material and the controversies that underlie EAD. The proposal did not spring up from the deliberations of the steering committee, the six task forces, the two working groups, the advisory council, and the corresponding principal investigators without drawing deeply from the well of collective wisdom in contemporary educational theory and practice. That, of course, is part of the problem.
EAD represents “consensus”—“a national-consensus, collaborative effort across philosophical and political differences,” as Carrese and Stoner put it. That is to say, EAD represents the views of the same educational establishment that has brought ruin to much of American K-12 education. “Consensus” in this case is not a recommendation. It is a warning.