How do we use public education to empower? While we use the word “empowerment” a great deal in the educational trenches, there seems to be little discussion or understanding of what it actually means and how it truly applies to so many of our engagements.
Over at Education Sector today, Peter Cookson has a great interview with Stanford University’s Linda Darling-Hammond. In the piece, Darling-Hammond provides a deeper dive into the empowerment issue and how we can use education for empowerment.
Among the nuggets is this one, Darling-Hammond’s thoughts regarding our obsession with international comparisons:
People make wild claims about what other countries do. So I looked at the high achieving countries … And guess what? They do a lot to promote equity. They ensure that children are well taken care of … Even when families have low incomes, there are safety nets to ensure that children are housed, fed, have health care, and access to good early learning opportunities. They fund schools equitably. They invest heavily in well-prepared teachers and school leaders for all schools.
ES offers up both a transcript of the interview, as well as a video for those who need the visual stimulation. Definitely worth a visit.
(Full disclosure: Eduflack has worked with Linda Darling-Hammond on a range of topics for more than a decade.)
