progressive ideas, conservative pedagogy

Again The Nation magazine puts out its educator edition with good content on many issues. But the Nation, a longtime progressive magazine, subscribes to a very conservative pedagogy in providing this guide.  It does not include students who homeschool, who are dropouts or who are not able to go to college. There is little content directly written for the learner.  The guide assumes a teacher and class setting instead of providing content accessible in many learning situations.

Education is lifelong and open access on the Internet. Here is the educational activist, John  Holt, writing in "Beyond Homeschooling" in 1972:

"Deschooling means not only doing away with compulsory attendance laws, the threat of the law, but also doing away with our whole system of diplomas and credentialing, which keeps many young people locked in school long after the law would let them get out.  In short, proposals to deschool society come in a context most unlikely to appeal to Stone Age millionaires."

Holt and other activists,  helped spur the homeschooling movement which has altered compulsory attendance laws in 50 states. The Internet is providing open source content K-12.  Even Bill Gates thinks schools may go away, though he continues to fund efforts to corporatize them.

You'd never know it from the pages of The Nation, a fine magazine and great resource in other ways.  Educational activism and issues are just not on the rader of progressives it seems. And yet the homeschool movement is a citizen-led, grassroots movement that has made significant changes to laws in the US by uniting citizens with different ideologies who all care about their families, their children, and want the right to have a say in their own families lives.