If anything defines the thrust of my postings here, it is a repeated exhortation both to myself and to others to think about things differently. To me, this is of upmost importance. Far too often, we are limited in our thinking by predefined boundaries or conceptions. This has the result of limiting our answer set to the various questions we ask ourselves, often without our even knowing it.
This is not an original thought on my part: what is more a cliché of our times than to “think outside the box”? Yet, we do not think outside the box very often at all, and no place less than in the political arena. Take, for example, the issue of public education in American politics. What are the major political issues relating to this subject? Vouchers, class size, teachers’ unions, merit pay, increased spending per student, standardized testing, and charter schools. These issues have been the major political issues regarding public education for at least the last decade, the period of time that I have been a voting citizen in the US. And the sides in the debate are fairly static; Democrats are good for reducing class size, higher spending per student, and supporting teachers’ unions, Republicans are good for vouchers, charter schools, and supporters of merit pay and standardized testing. We are left with both a supposed “crisis” in public education which is persistent (and in many ways mythical) as well as with a static debate, with political impasse allowing for these issues to remain dominant and no theoretical reforms ever fully implemented. Ideas outside of this spectrum, such as the expansion of either the school day or school year, tend to lack partisan support from either side and languish, undebated and unimplemented.