DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND DAVID BROOKS’ SANDWICH SHOP. In “The language of privilege,” Robert Pondiscio of the Fordham Institute writes, “We are ruining America, notes dour New York Times columnist David Brooks, suddenly and considerably alarmed by a standard feature of American life, if not human nature—the tendency of the privileged and powerful to guard jealously every advantage they have been handed or earned:”

To be highly proficient in Brooksian English—the language of privilege—requires mastery over not just an alphabet and rules of grammar, but also an enormous range of assumed knowledge, historical references, and cultural allusions that are commonly held by members of a speech community. “My kids know how to be Black,” one parent tells Delpit. “You all teach them how to be successful in the white man’s world.”

American education remains deeply reluctant to do this, since it requires overthrowing any number of traditions and practices—from child-centered pedagogies, assumptions about student engagement, and other progressive education ideals, to local control of curriculum, the privileging of skills over content, and the movement toward mass customization of education. Each of these in ways great or small work against the cause of language proficiency; in doing so, they make the task of educating for upward mobility more difficult.

Make yourself a soppressata, capicollo and prosciutto sandwich on a striata baguette and read the whole thing.