ABSTRACT
There is little doubt that we missed the moment to say “No!” to the transformation that has occurred in education. In fact educators such as David Imig and Diane Ravitch, who enthusiastically participated in that transformation, now worry about its consequences. The question is, can we find, as Naomi Klein puts it in The Shock Doctrine, “a new narrative that offers a perspective on the shocking events” so that we can “become re-oriented and the world [can] begin to make sense again” (2007, 458)? I think we can, but we need to understand why we educators didn’t say no at the beginning. How did we allow the language of education, study, teaching, and intellectual and creative endeavor to transform itself into the language and practices of standards and accountability? How did it happen that we approved the use of pervasive testing that would shock us into compliance? How did we become complicit in the erosion of our own power, and why did we embrace the advice of salesmen, financiers, corporate lawyers, accountants, and millionaires? What led us to think that if we applied practices imported from the world of business we could solve our educational problems, and how did we surrender our right to define those problems? How did we lose our way?
