The Irish have been everywhere lately. Monday was St. Patrick’s Day and President Bush hung out with Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. And on Friday, Frank McCourt (author of the popular memoir “Angela’s Ashes”) spoke at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre and he had a clear message for American politicans: “Stay out of education.”
McCourt, who spent the bulk of his childhood in Ireland, taught English for thirty years in New York City schools. So he thinks he knows something about the rudiments of education — and it don’t involve standardized tests.
“These politicians, they want to create productive citizens,” McCourt told the crowd. “Well, Al Capone was a productive citizen.” McCourt called Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act a waste of resources.
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Interspersing his political diatribe with excerpts from his formidable prose, McCourt explains that “We are in the business of freeing minds. I would rather see a kid writing poetry under a tree…than studying for SAT’s, PSAT’s, ACT’s, and the like.”
McCourt had spent the earlier part of Friday with D.C. high school students. “There are miracles happening every day in what the politicians would have you believe are the worst schools in the country,” McCourt contends. “Beneath the red tape is strength, smarts and benefits.” But he also had a more simple summary of teenagers: “They’re either hungry orhorny.”
McCourt’s day with local students also “involved” cocaine, apparently: Author Alice McDermott, who shared the stage with McCourt, asked him to “tell us the cocaine story” he had told the high schoolers. Playing too cool for school, McCourt declined.
