Field Notes
Editor’s Note
By Paul MattickNew York has never seemed more like the supposedly future world portrayed in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner than in the last few months—not just the noodle stands tucked in around the towering high-rises, but above all the endless cold, grey drizzle that mocked the persistent hope that winter was about over. So it’s hard not simply to be happy to see the sun again, along with the seasonal pleasures of blooming trees, flowers, people enjoying the streets.
EDUCATION REFORM Beneath the Surface
PART I: Motives and Methods
By John Garvey
In this multi-part article, I will describe the motivations and methods of the dominant forces in education reform circles, assess the consequences of those reforms, and sketch out an alternative to the complaints and demands of the major opponents of the dominant forces.
Baseball and Marxism
in Brooklyn (and Boston)
By Peter St. Clair
Every spring when the snow melts away and baseball season rolls around, my thoughts turn to Brooklyn where I was born and grew up in the baseball-crazed New York of the ’50s. Despite the fact that I’ve lived in and around Boston for the last 45 years, it was in Brooklyn that I first fell in love with baseball and with my team, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Fragments of Europe
By Jacob BlumenfeldStrolling down the promenade in central Madrid on a Thursday afternoon, I glance left and see a Museo del Jamón (Museum of Ham), I look right and find a shop full of Catholic kitsch, left again and it’s a bar selling overpriced tapas, right again and there are two glass doors brimming with hundreds of shielded riot cops about to explode onto the Puerta del Sol. They are waiting for the 20,000 high school students marching against austerity and cuts to education. If anything goes wrong, they are ready.
