Email from a NYC teacher

A powerful and spot-on comment by Fred Murphy, the Jaime Escalante of NYC I mentioned in my previous email (he teaches AP European History at Harlem's Frederick Douglass Academy -- NOT a charter school, lest you think I only write about charters):

I think that the real battle ground for the United States today is in the classroom, not Basra or Kabul. A gordian knot of lowered expectations, the culture of affirmation, inequitable distribution of resources, and Teaching Colleges spouting methodology instead of driving hard academic curriculum creates an uneducated underclass that are not productive enough to succeed, but just productive enough to be exploited.