Singing the Song of the Open Road

Abstract

When I look at the strategies, emphases, and requirements laid out in discussions of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, I do not see, as many educators seem to these days, the root of many of our current problems in the classroom. What I see in all this focus on “accountability” is simply the next in a series of logical steps, a mere symptom of an illness that pervades all arenas of culture in the United States: a way of looking at the world that I call smallness.