Credentials?

The following was written in response to Cevin Soling's interview on the Colbert Report a couple weeks back:


Every time I see something like this, my knee jerk reaction is to question how much experience in Education someone like this actually has. I get a little hot under the collar when people who know very little about our public school systems start to criticize it. I often hear the argument, "Well, I WENT to public school..." Great. So did I. The difference is that I realize that the way I may have observed things at 8, 12 or 17, may have been a very skewed or very limit like scope of what was going on. I had a very, for a lack of a better word, childish, oversimplified view of what school was and what my education meant to me. I get the sense that people who didn't have a very good school experience, assume that there's a blanket problem with all education and, in cases like this, do a lot of narrow research to back themselves up and then go mouth off about it.

I'm not saying public education is perfect. Far from it. There are a multitude of complex problems to be fixed. Before leaping into this sort of tantrum, it would really benefit people to understand how we got to this point exactly what is at stake. There's good press to be had (for yourself) in exposing problems. The issue is it takes a lot of know-how and effort even attempt to deal with them, and these types of folks don't want to sign on for the real work. Not a lot of people take the time to get to know the root of a problem so they can actually solve it.

That being said, I do realize that to criticize this movie and Mr. Soling's research based off one interview is hypocritical. So, it would appear that I've committed myself to watching it.