The Massachusetts School Law of 1642 laid out the rationale for public education: “For as much as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any Common-wealth.” How do contemporary efforts to privatize public education square with the civic role that education has played in American democracy? Internationally recognized leader in education policy Julian Vasquez Heilig examines the variety of ways in which public education is being privatized in the name of “reform” and suggests ways for citizens to respond that both improve educational experience and strengthen the societal and civic role that education plays. Suzie McGlone, a Boston Public School teacher, responds and moderates.
This program is funded in part by MassHumanities. Co-sponsored by Citizens for Public Schools.
Video
Culture
WHAT IS COLLEGE FOR TODAY?
College once offered a clear path to opportunity and civic life. Today, that path is shifting fast — squeezed by rising costs, AI’s impact on work, and political battles over the mission of higher education. Nicole Lynn Lewis and Susan Blum join moderator Anya Kamenetz to ask: What is college for now, and who is being left behind?
Work
The Health of Democracy: Social Immobility and Civic Participation
Economist Randy Albelda examines the rise in U.S. social immobility and the role that contemporary labor conditions have played in limiting Americans’ expectations to do better than their parents’ generation.
Podcast
RESISTING ERASURE: The role of Indigenous People in American Identity
Even as Indigenous knowledge and ways of life have been borrowed and celebrated by mainstream culture, Native peoples have faced dispossession, exclusion and erasure. How, despite all efforts to eradicate them over the centuries, have Indigenous communities continued to survive and exercise their sovereignty and sacred cultural ways?