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Letter sent 10/9/2003 Editor, American Educator: I was surprised and disappointed to see the extensive coverage given to Freedom House in your Fall 2003 issue. Although at first glance they may seem unbiased and constructive, a deeper scrutiny of the organization and their mission makes me wonder if they are truly friends of American teachers and their unions. To begin with, where do they get their money? Three major conservative family funds have provided over a million dollars since 2001 - the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Sarah Mellon Scaiffe Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has crusaded to privatize education through the promotion of school vouchers. And a close look at the matrix of factors that determine "freedom" also reveals a bias towards support for the private sector and laissez-faire government. Curiously absent from the criteria are some from other established rights organizations. These include many of the points enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Article 26: "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit." What gets left out of their analysis are other truths. Cuba, one of the countries singled out for condemnation in the Freedom House report, was also singled out by a 2001 UNESCO education task force, but the latter observed that "In test scores, completion rates, and literacy levels, Cuban primary students are at or near the top of a list of peers from across Latin America," and "Cuba far and away led the region in third- and fourth-grade mathematics and language achievement..." How do our own schools compare? "Freedom" is a complex social construct to measure, and as educators we owe it to our students to critically assess sources - including biased analysis from partisan organizations such as Freedom House. Lincoln Cushing, |