Final results for our poll, do we live in an age of insanity or stupidity, and was that the right question?

Not long ago, we featured a poll on this blog, the idea for which originally came from a speech by Diane Ravitch.  We asked readers, "Do we live in an age of insanity or stupidity?" when it comes to education policy. 

Here are the results: 33% for insanity; 59% for stupidity; 6% for neither. 

But was this really the right question?

We live in an age when education policy is being made by non-educators like Bill Gates, who calls  for class size increases in our public schools, while the private schools his children attend have 15 to 17 students per class.  

We live in an age when Justin Snider, a writer for the Hechinger Post  (which receives funding from Gates) echoes this view, calling efforts to reduce class sizes in the public schools "foolish", while not revealing that the classes he teaches at Columbia University are capped at fifteen.

We live in an age when the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls for teacher evaluation and pay to be tied to student test scores, while the Arlington VA schools that his children attend admit that they don't do this; neither does the private school that the Obama children attend, because, as a school administrator points out, "We don't believe [test scores] to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness."

No,  as Diane Ravitch has concluded, and I agree: we live in an age of hypocrisy and outright meanness, when it comes to those powerful men making policies for our public schools.

Diane Ravitch asks: do we live in an age of stupidity or insanity?

On Saturday, at an event sponsored by the Chicago's Teacher Union, Diane Ravitch asked, do we live in an age of insanity or stupidity? Vote to the right!

To a crowd of over 500, including mostly teachers and interim Schools CEO Terry Mazany, Diane criticized the multibillion-dollar testing industry, charters, Teach for America, and turnaround management organizations.

Catalyst magazine described it this way:

In a speech that painted a dismal picture of the intensifying attacks against teachers in many states around the country but was also a call for teachers to remain united and engaged, Ravitch relayed an alarming account of recent and proposed measures to downsize teaching staffs and increase class sizes.

“I’ve wondered, given all the talk of school reform and seeing how it’s playing out in the media and legislature, do we live in an age of national insanity or is it an age of national stupidity.....All across the country, we have governors and legislatures and philanthropists telling us we must reform our schools at the same time they’re cutting the education budget and refusing to raise taxes on the people who have money..”

Please vote on the sidebar to the right: insanity or stupidity? You can also answer undecided or don't know. You be the judge! And then leave a comment explaining your vote below.