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have had some of them in my classes and have thought that they might be
better off in a trade school, or an adequate high school. (In Austria, for
instance, early streaming is the norm, and transferring to university later on
is facilitated.) This gets us back to the assumption that in our democracy
every kid deserves a college education. I was struck by the mindlessness of
this notion, when the nice kid who fixed the windshield wiper of my car
told me how much he loves his work and then asked me whether at my
university they had advanced courses for car mechanics. This is not what
John Dewey had in mind when he assumed that an educational alliance of
teachers and workers would be salutary. Neither did he foresee our "post–
modern" dilemmas, or how, due to the many meanings and missions of
education, his ideas might be misinterpreted or misapplied.
