Candidate John McCain, during last night’s debate:

This strategy has succeeded. And we are winning in Iraq. And we will come home with victory and with honor. And that withdrawal is the result of every counterinsurgency that succeeds.

Richard Nixon, near the end of the conflict in Vietnam:

Throughout the years of negotiations, we have insisted on peace with honor. In my addresses to the Nation from this room of January 25 and May 8, [1972] I set forth the goals that we considered essential for peace with honor.

Why honor? Why at the end? If a war begins without it (see Tonkin, Gulf of or any statement on W.M.D. during 2002), can it truly end in grace?

Simply invoking honor…is that really enough?

My only other thought during last night’s debate: have Republicans decided to run General David Petreaus in 2016, if not sooner? Everything I’ve read about the man indicates his extraordinary ambition. McCain seemed to mention his name as a talisman throughout the debate.

There’s a new report out on the KIPP schools, which at least according to the blurb I read at edweek, seems to finally address the question of sustainability. This model, premised upon lawyer-style work days for teachers, has always seen a great deal of turnover.

Edweek, quoting the report:

“Teacher turnover, a result of both ambitious young teachers’ moving on and the demanding nature of the job, poses challenges for Bay Area school leaders and may have implications for the sustainability of the model.”

As James Traub points out, almost eight years ago, ” any method that depends on a Jaime Escalante is no method at all.”

Any teacher can break themselves for a couple of years and have significant success. What can we do to take this success from classrooms to entire schools and then sustained building-wide? How can we address school culture rather than individual heroes?

Desegregation is not and was never expected to be an easy task. Racial attitudes ingrained in our Nation’s childhood and adolescence are not quickly thrown aside in its middle years. But just as the inconvenience of some cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the rights of others, so public opposition, no matter how strident, cannot be permitted to divert this Court from the enforcement of the constitutional principles at issue in this case. Today’s holding, I fear, is more a reflection of a perceived public mood that we have gone far enough in enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of equal justice than it is the product of neutral principles of law. In the short run, it may seem to be the easier course to allow our great metropolitan areas to be divided up each into two cities–one white, the other black–but it is a course, I predict, our people will ultimately regret. I dissent.

The best part of teaching a foundations course is that you get to return to old friends, old documents, every semester.

From George Counts, Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?

Society is never redeemed without effort, struggle, and sacrifice. Authentic leaders are never found breathing that rarefied atmosphere lying above the smoke and dust of battle.

Here’s what Obama and McCain had to say about education during their convention speeches:

Obama

Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy. Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don’t have that chance. I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American – if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Here’s McCain:

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.