As a thesis, I'm not so sure. Even though these schools serve students from a strong base of tax and parental support, he argues, they needlessly separate the good kids from the bad kids. As wary of class distinctions as Americans are, their public schools still operate on the principle that the book smart and the street smart should not be given the same chance to learn,'' he says. This claim is an enormous stretch and it goes unproven, merely stated. Anybody who has worked around schools and school issues knows that educational research is only as open-minded as its author.
Schools are life.
They offer enough variables to give skeptics fodder for their doom theories and Pollyannas reason to relax. The best I can tell is that Mathews believes schools go through a subconscious transformation that leaves expectations continuously raised for some kids and lowered for others. He believes that competitiveness for college is the engine that motivates many of the best students. He believes the college experience ought to be offered to more students, that the capability of reaching college would somehow improve America's schools. Its merits sag under the broader issue of spotty national achievement.