At teaching hospitals, med students are presented with real patients with real injuries and illnesses to better learn medicine. On these pages, I have tried to bring you first-person coverage of education reform issues, to enable you to become a better-informed and effective consumer of education, advocate for your child, or activist for your values.
Accordingly, get your browser over to Craig Westover's blog, ground zero for a media dustup between him and the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman. The exchange is useful for two reasons: it allows Westover to present some very well-thought out arguments for school choice (which INCLUDE government-funded and controlled PUBLIC SCHOOLS, contrary to what some would have you believe) and accountability, and it shows you all how liberals try to deflect well-reasoned, fact-based arguements with rhetorical rope-a-dope: changing the subject, name-calling, distortion, and emotion, and ignoring suggestions for mano-a-mano on-air debates.
A choice excerpt from Coleman's December 19 column: "..his blog on the Internet shows a picture of an ancient mariner in yellow slickers, standing at the helm of a storm-tossed yacht. He looks like the guy on a box of frozen fish sticks...Fishsticks has gone back to his boat and confined his tirades to the first refuge of scoundrels, his personal Internet blog, where he is toasted by other rum-swigging hearties daily."
If you can't win by arguing the facts, mocking your critic works every time! Coleman's mixed metaphor is making me seasick. The Gorton's fisherman toasted by pirates at "the first refuge of scoundrels?" Aarrg, there be plenty of rum 'n fishsticks at Keegan's next time, mateys!
Check out the other blogs of the Northern Alliance for additional coverage, such as these comments from our friend King at SCSU Scholars. King points out that the real significance of the debate is not the media show, which Coleman would have you believe, it's accountability. Public schools get plenty of money, but how are they spending it?
