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It's happening! Another dream realized!

Sometimes people ask me (and others who work on this program) how and why we started Tell Me More. I often quote Toni Morrison, who, when asked why she started writing, said, "I wrote the book I wanted to read."

When Executive Producer Marie Nelson and I started this program more than two years ago(!), we quickly realized we were not starting with a blank slate at all. Many of the segments you hear are those either one or both of us had long wanted to produce when we were working in other media outlets and, for whatever reason, could not find the right vehicle.

Today's program represents a down payment on one of the ideas I have desperately wanted to see realized for a long time.

Education is so important. It is fundamental to who we are as Americans. We live in a country where we believe — even against great odds — that every child can be whoever he or she wants to be.

Do you remember childhood stories about enslaved Americans learning to read in secret, about the young Abe Lincoln plowing the field with a book in his hands, about the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan taking his city college entrance exams with his longshoreman's grappling hook still in his pocket? Do you remember Barack Obama talking during the campaign and in his memoir about how his mother used to wake him up at the crack of dawn to review his lessons because she felt his school in Indonesia wasn't rigorous enough?

 

So why do we spend so little time talking about education in the media when we spend so much money and time on it in real life? I think partly because, like politics, education feels very local.

We say, "Well, gee, why would the guy in Kansas care about what's going on in my school down the street?"

But education is local, it is national, it is fundamental, and, now, more than ever, when President Obama says it is one of the things he wants most to fix, we need to spend some quality time discussing this subject. But how?

Like the slogan says, "Just do it."

We started with an hour-long program today about the charter school movement. The movement has taken hold in so many places, but Washington, D.C., is ground zero. So we decided to take a deep look at the conversations going on here, because we know they also are occurring around the country. Every trend (some might say "fad") you see in the education is playing out here, in D.C. So we are going to dig right in.