6. See http://www.thesecret.tv/behind-the-secret.html.
7. The op ed ran in the New York Times on September 24, 2008, p. A27. A longer version is available on her blog at http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/09/how-positive-thinking-wrecked-the-economy.html. An even longer version of this argument is available in her most recent book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).
8. The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, September 17, 2008.
CHAPTER TWO: AT THE ARSE END OF THE LATE, GREAT ENLIGHTENMENT.
1. Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?" in Philosophical Writings, ed. Ernst Behler (London: Continuum Press, 1993).
2. Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out of Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine (New York: Threshold Press, 2009).
3. Debora Mackenzie, "End of the Enlightenment," New Scientist, October 8, 2005, p. 39.
4. George Monbiot, "The End of the Enlightenment," The Guardian, December 18, 2001. Available on his blog at http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2001/12/18/the-end-of-the-enlightenment/. Garry Wills, "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out," New York Times, November 4, 2004, p. A25. Available online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DA173CF937A35752C1A9629C8B63.
5. Victor Davis Hanson, "Losing the Enlightenment," Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2006. Available online at http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009312.
6. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, ed. G. S. Noerr, trans. E. Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
7. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, ed. Moncure Daniel Conway (Mineola, NY: Dover Books, 2004).
8. Southern Baptist Convention, "Baptist Faith and Message," adopted at the 2000 convention and available online at http://www.sbc.net/BFM/bfm2000.asp.
9. See http://www.creationmuseum.org/about.
10. "Alberta Passes Law Allowing Parents to Pull Students Out of Class," CBC, June 2, 2009. Available online at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/06/02/alberta-human-rights-school-gay-education-law.html.
11. Quoted by Associated Free Press reporting from Dover, Pennsylvania, March 27, 2005.
12. John Locke, "The Second Treatise of Civil Government," in The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1995).
13. Thomas Paine, "Common Sense," ibid.
14. Voltaire, "On Commerce" (Letter Ten), in Letters on England, trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).
15. Voltaire,"On the Presbyterians" (Letter Six), ibid.
16. David Hume, "Of Refinement in the Arts," in Selected Writings, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
17. Immanuel Kant, "On the Common Saying: This may be true in theory but it does not apply in practice," in Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
18. Jerry W. Knudson, Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
19. Denis Diderot, The Encyclopedia: Selections, ed. Stephen J. Gendizer (New York: Harper and Row, 1967).
20. Patton Oswalt, Werewolves and Lollipops (SubPop Records, 2007).
21. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to George Wythe, August 16, 1789, in The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
22. Bernard Weinraub, "Bush and Governors Set Education Goals," New York Times, September 29, 1989, p. A10.
CHAPTER THREE: IS OUR SCHOOLS SUCKING?.
1. John Adams, "A Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law," in The Portable John Adams, ed. John Patrick Diggins (New York: Penguin Books, 2004).
2. Lowell M. Rose and Alec Gallup, "39th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Towards Public Schools," in Phi Delta Kappan, September 2007, p. 33.
3. Canadian Education Association, Public Education in Canada: Facts, Trends and Attitudes 2007. Available online at www.cea-ace.ca.
4. The CBC survey results are available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/passorfail/.
5. The Center for Educational Reform tracks charter school numbers at http://www.edreform.com/Fast_Facts/K12_Facts/.
6. Results of Stanford's study on charter schools are available online at http://credo.stanford.edu/.
7. John Fitzgerald for Minnesota 2020, "Checking in on Charter Schools: An Examination of Charter School Finances." Available online at http://www.mn2020.org/index.asp.
8. Alvin P. Sanoff, "What Professors and Teachers Think: A Perception Gap over Students' Preparation," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 10, 2006, p. B9.
9. See http://www.fairtest.org/testing-explosion-0.
10. Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg, "The Administrative Costs of No Child Left Behind," Heritage Foundation, April 7, 2007. Available online at http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed040907b.cfm.
11. Kevin Carey, "The Pangloss Index: How States Game the No Child Left Behind Act," Education Sector, November 13, 2007. Available online at http://www.educationsector.org/research/research_show.htm?doc_id=582446.
12. Claudia Wallis, "No Child Left Behind: Doomed to Fail?" Time, June 8, 2008. Available online at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1812758,00.html.
13. "President Bush Discusses No Child Left Behind, Woodbridge Elementary and Middle School, Washington, D.C., October 5, 2006." Transcript available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061005-6.html.
14. Will Woodward, "Teachers' Union Threatens Boycott of SATS," The Guardian, April 2, 2002. Available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/apr/01/politics.schools.
15. PISA data for 2000, 2003, and 2006 are available online at http://www.pisa.oecd.org/pages/0,2987,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html.
16. The National Center for Education Statistics analysis of the PIRLS for 2001 and 2006 is available at their website, http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008017. For more information on the PIRLS, see its website at http://timss.bc.edu/.
17. James J. Heckman and Paul A. Lafontaine, "The Declining American High School Graduation Rate: Evidence, Sources, and Consequences," National Bureau of Economic Research. Available online at http://www.nber.org/reporter/2008number1/heckman.html.
18. Mitchell Landsberg and Howard Blume, "1 in 4 California High School Students Drop Out, State Says," Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2008, p. A2.
19. Young's essay is available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment.
20. You can access the latest stats on economic mobility at www.economicmobility.org, which is a collaborative research project involving the Pew Charitable Trusts and some opposing think tanks the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the Urban Institute.
21. One chart, for the GRE, is available at http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm. Philosophy departments have many of these charts, since philosophy majors usually score well on exit tests. There's another one at http://philosophy.acadiau.ca/why_phil/scores.htm, drawn from Clifford Adelman's study of standardized test scores of college students from the 1960s to the '80s. For more recent numbers, see Michael Nieswiadomy, "LSAT Scores of Economics Majors: The 20032004 Class Update," available at http://economics.gcsu.edu/students/lsat.pdf.
22. You can still find A Nation at Risk online at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html.
23. Greg Toppo, "'Nation at Risk': The Best Thing or the Worst Thing for Education?" USA Today, May 22, 2008. Available online at http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-04-22-nation-at-risk_N.htm.
24. For more of her criticisms of textbooks, see Ravitch's The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (New York: Vintage Books, 2004). She has also written a history of U.S. school reforms that looks at the oscillation between vocational, progressive, and traditional notions of education, Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).
25. For more on the Texas textbook controversy, see "History's First Draft: Newt Gingrich But No Liberals," Houston Chronicle, August 20, 2009. Available online at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6581189.html. Also, "State Education Board Shouldn't Rewrite History," Dallas Morning News, July 18, 2009. Available online at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-olivera_18met.ART.State.Edition1.4bb2401.html.
26. Michael F. Shaughnessy, "An Interview with Diane Ravitch," EducationNews.org, March 2008. Available online at http://ednews.org/articles/24020/1/An-Interview-with-Diane-Ravitch-On-Some-Current-Events/Page1.html.
CHAPTER FOUR: SCREW U OR HATE MY PROFESSORS.
1. U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics, 2008.
2. Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Trends in Higher Education: Volume One Enrolment, 2007.
3. College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2007.
4. Figure from Statistics Canada's Survey of Tuition and Living Accommodation Costs for Full-time Students at Canadian Degree-Granting Institutions, October 18, 2007.
5. National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America's Promise, College Learning in the New Global Century, January 10, 2007.
6. Jill Casner-Lotto and Linda Barrington, Are They Really Ready to Work?, released by the Conference Board in October 2006.
7. Ibid.
8. Spellings Commission, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education, September 2006.
9. American College Testing Program, National Collegiate Retention and Persistence to Degree Rates, Trends 19832008. More stats are available at the act educational website, www.act.org.
10. Danielle Shaienks and Tomasz Gluszynski, Participation in Postsecondary Education: Graduates, Continuers and Drop-outs: Results from YITS Cycle 4, Statistics Canada, November 2007.
11. Barbara Kay, "Liberate the Campus," National Post, October 24, 2007. Available online at http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/10/24/barbara-kay-liberate-the-campus.aspx.
12. Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner, "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates," paper presented at the American Enterprise Institute conference "Reforming the Politically Correct University," November 2007.
13. The press release announcing the Argus Project is available online at http://www.nas.org/polPressReleases.cfm?Doc_Id=278.
14. David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006).
15. Russell Jacoby, "Gone and Being Forgotten," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 25, 2008, p. B5.
16. Spellings Commission, A Test of Leadership.
17. "Why Universities Should be Graded, Too," Maclean's, September 4, 2006. Available online at http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20060904_132707_132707&source=srch.
18. Alan Finder, "Decline of the Tenure Track Raises Concerns," New York Times, November 20, 2007, p. A16.
19. Lindsay Waters, "Bonfire of the Humanities," Village Voice, August 24, 2004, p. 46.
CHAPTER FIVE: BULLY VS. NERD.
1. H. L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques (1916, reprinted by BiblioBazaar, 2007).
2. Chuck Todd, First Read blog, July 23, 2009. Available online at http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.
3. Michael Hirsh, "Brains Are Back," Newsweek, November 7, 2008. Available online at http://www.newsweek.com/id/168032.
4. From a town hall meeting in Sun City, Arizona, August 25, 2009.
5. Greer issued his press release on September 1, 2009. The full text is available online at http://www.rpof.org/article.php?id=754.
6. Actor Craig T. Nelson, appearing on Glenn Beck's show, Fox News, May 28, 2009.
7. This gem was uttered by a protestor at a town hall meeting in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with Representative Robert Inglis and quoted by Phillip Rucker in "S.C. Senator Is a Voice of Reform Opposition," Washington Post, July 28, 2009.
8. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 2001).
9. Robert Barnes, "Straight Talk Express's Limited Engagement," posted on The Trail, the Washington Post's online campaign diary, August 14, 2008. Available online at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/08/straight-talk-expresss-limited.html.
10. Richard Hofstader, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963).
11. "Agnew Unleashed," Time, October 31, 1969. Available online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839090-1,00.html.
12. Kenneth J. Hughes, Jr., "Nixon vs. the Imaginary 'Jewish Cabal,'" History News Network, September 24, 2007. Available online at http://hnn.us/articles/42970.html.
13. See Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (Jackson, TN: Public Affairs, 2000).
14. Reagan's 1985 address to the cpac, "Creators of the Future," is available on the organization's website at http://www.conservative.org/pressroom/reagan/reagan1985.asp.
15. Evan Thomas, "The Left Starts to Rethink Reagan," Newsweek, May 3, 2008, p. 38.
16. See "The Mendacity Index," Washington Monthly, May 2003. Available online at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html.
17. See Jonathan Chait, The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).