Weep for the Children of Uvalde by Diane Ravitch

We at Defending the Early Years are distraught with grief and anger over the senseless murder of young children and teachers in Uvalde, Texas.  We are re-posting a blog written by Diane Ravitch, which conveys our feelings as well.

 

Another mass murder of little children.

More families robbed of their beloved child.

More tears.

More grief.

More empty expressions of sympathy from politicians who send “thoughts and prayers.”

There is no point in trying to understand the young man who carried out this atrocity. His “reasons” or motive don’t matter.

What matters is that he murdered innocent children and teachers.

President Biden sees this horrific tragedy as proof that gun control is necessary to protect the innocent from the evil, the insane, the impulsive killers. I agree.

But it’s perfectly obvious that Republicans will actively fight any effort to curb the means of mass murder.

There could be a mass murder every day of the week for the rest of the year, and Republicans would still fight any attempt to screen or limit who has access to murder weapons.

As the tragic events in Uvalde, Buffalo, and hundreds of other places show, Republican Party today believes in the right to life for the unborn, but doesn’t care at all about the lives of the born.

None of us is safe.

No place is safe.

The U.S. has 400 million guns.

No matter how many innocent children or adults die at the hands of a killer, the right to own a gun is more precious to the Republican Party than the right to life.

The original posting of this blog can be found on Diane’s website.

Guest Contributor

Diane Ravitch was a Research Professor of Education at New York University from 1995-2020 and is a historian of education. She is the Founder and President of the Network for Public Education (NPE). From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards. During the 1980s and 1990s and into the early years of the twenty-first century—as a writer, professor, assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and member of prestigious conservative think tanks, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret task force at the hoover institution—Diane Ravitch was a leading advocate of conservative ideas for fixing America’s education system, including charter schools, standards, accountability, and high-stakes standardized testing. But by about 2006-07, she began to realize that these policies were not working. She began to criticize them and to criticize the federal law called “No child left behind” with the publication of the Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, she became one of the most outspoken critics of ideas she once championed.

Image of Diane Ravitch

To read more about DEY’s thoughts on early childhood and early childhood education, check out our monthly blog and our bi-monthly podcast.  If you are an educator or parent of young children and need guidance on how to speak to your children about the events that took place in Uvalde, TX, then take a look at the resources we have put together to help facilitate this conversation in a developmentally appropriate way.