The Manufactured Crisis

The Manufactured Crisis written by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle is a book disproving the horrible reputation America’s education system has been given by the media and by the government. Americans have almost been programmed to believe that the public school systems are failing and that in order to make their children successful they have to be sent to private schools. The Manufactured Crisis is a well written book jammed packed full of research and observation that overwhelming disproves the myths and bashing of public school systems.
In chapter one Biddle and Berliner grab you attention right away this throwing a number of news headings at you. Most of these headings read something like, “Fourteen-year-old student, repeatedly tormented and beaten by school thugs, hangs himself,” or “High school girls turn to prostitution for entertainment, curiosity. (1)” These head lines are assumed to be those from American schools, but in fact they are headlines from Japanese public school. Who would have thought that other countries have just the same problems if not worse than our own? Biddle and Berliner try to show that the media have in fact been constantly telling us about another “frightening story about the dreadful state of education in our country (1)”. The biggest argument that really turned me on to his book is that they prove that presidents and the media have actually no evidence that these failures exist. They even prove that Ronald Reagan had made claims of failures in the public school systems, but never once cited this evidence or told Americans in one of his many speeches where to find this evidence. I like that this book is all about where the evidence is, and how they have it and the government and the media does not. I also think Berliner and Biddle did a great job in the first chapter to introduce the issues and state a plan that they have to disprove these myths and generalities of America’s public school systems.
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