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Thursday, March 1, 2012

This Absurd Takeover of Our Public Life - Bridging Differences - Education Week

This Absurd Takeover of Our Public Life - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

This Absurd Takeover of Our Public Life

Dear Diane,

I've spent the week fighting a cold of some sort, and it has worn me out. But not so badly that I didn't read your Tuesday blast on "How to Demoralize Teachers." I've a lot to add to it, but first I must return to something I touched on in a recent blog entry of my own.

Regarding Diego Rivera: In the late 1930s my father's friend from college days (City College of New York after World War I), Jay Lovestone, had given up being a left-winger and a Communist-of-some-sort and had a dilemma. He had a set of murals that Diego Rivera had painted in 1933 for his Workers School in New York. It had closed and he had managed to give away all but one. The one he couldn't get rid of was Rivera's re-doing of the central mural intended for Rockefeller Center, which the Rockefellers had tried to get him to change! Rivera stuck to his guns, and you won't therefore find it in Rockefeller Center. Would we like it, he asked? A bit naively,