ABSTRACT
If only I could begin like this: it is the best of times; it is the worst of times. It has such a nice (and familiar)1 ring to it. However, is it really apt? “Worst” certainly seems like a possibility. But “best”? After looking more closely at the McCarthy era and after interviewing 20 critical holistic teachers around the United States it seems more accurate to pull back on the absolutes and say that for education in the United States, things are more relative-both better and worse than I had thought. Worse conditions nationally; better conditions locally; worse in terms of organized resistance; better in terms of varieties of resistance.
