66 INVITED CHAPTERS
vocal members of the mainstream community that create media commentary on a local,
regional, and national scale. I have repeatedly mentioned the importance of being or
becoming public intellectuals. To that end, I believe that we must embrace the definition
expressed by Posner (2001), who adeptly defined this term in the following manner:
A public intellectual expresses himself in a way that is accessible to the public, and
the focus of his expression is on matters of general public concern of... or inflected
by... a political or ideological cast... Most often they either comment on current
controversies or offer general reflections on the direction or health of society. In
their reflective mode they may be utopian in the broad sense of seeking to steer the
society in a new direction or denunciatory because their dissatisfaction with the
existing state of society overwhelms any effort to propose reforms (p. 35).So, we must share the facts as we know them. We must also, in forceful ways, negate that
which is not substantiated by verifiable research. When a plan of action is defined as “best
practices,” we must indeed expect that those practices are truly “best” for all and not for just a
small segment of our student population. To return to an earlier comment, we must share
what we know about the powerful nature of funding enhancement on overall educational
success. We must debate openly and powerfully against those who maintain that money does
not matter in P-12 education. We must, likewise, show the compelling outcomes derived by
programs like Head Start, and structures like small classes. As we are composing our op/ed
pieces for local and national newspapers, we must share what is known about these programs,
so as to offset those who loudly scream for less government in their lives (i.e., that is, unless,
their home or community is destroyed by flooding or tornadoes; in that case, more
government is certainly better).
In keeping with that same line of thought, as public intellectuals, we must freely and
openly debate issues like class size and racial isolation of non-dominant groups. We must
share, as Kozol has so vividly done over the years, the despair of children who toil in center-
city schools. These discussions, as held on local television and radio, might (and let’s hope
will) just be the appropriate degree of counterbalance to the right-wing talk show hosts who
proclaim that class size doesn’t matter and that racial discrimination is “dead” in today’s
America. In a recent commencement address, the internationally known author Salman
Rushdie, urged students at Nova Southeastern University to embrace heterodoxy. I, too. urge
all of you to embrace heterodoxy as you begin or continue your work as public intellectuals.
Heterodoxy, as Rushdie defined it, is “the ability to reject received ideas and stand against
the orthodoxies of your time” (Rushdie, 2006, p. 3). As a simple example of this sort of
action, we might challenge charter school advocates and “call out” their lack of successes in
reforming schools via use of those standardized instruments that have been so highly touted
by these same advocates.
In addition to being forceful advocates for what we know about educational research, we
must also avoid being apologists for these same data when it is not well received by the
larger community. Not too many years ago, Ruhl-Smith and I composed a scathing piece
directed at the misuse of and/or illogical interpretation methods used in specific states, as
applied to mandated testing protocols. This piece was warmly received by most reviewers;
however, one individual asserted that public schools will be held accountable by some means
and that the authors must recognize this and also give credit to the states that have been
putting a great deal of effort into this accountability work. Well, at first, I was flabbergasted
by these words. Could a colleague in the field of education administration be so naïve as to