Talk:Jaime Escalante

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I'm a little bothered by this page's POV -- it's very lauditory towards Mr. Escalante and dismissive of his critics. It's not even clear why they were critical. Any chance someone who knows more about the issue than I could expand on the debate a bit, perhaps by adding a quote or two from the administrators with whom Mr. Escalante clashed or at least a summary of their arguments? Ambyr 04:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well obviously people were jealous. But if there isn't a whole lot of info about the critics, you can't really expect it to be put here. I don't thinks it's POV, just a lack of adequate knowledge about the criticisms.

It's very easy for this page to be laudatory toward Escalante and dismissive toward critics when editors have the benefit of hindsight and little knowledge about a school system. Late in his career, Escalante was involved in a power struggle with school administration. I don't think anyone at the time was certain of what Escalante was doing or if they were hurting anyone. All they knew was that Escalante was thinking of the extreme long term and taking up school resources. School admin probably was thinking about the short term and all the resources he was taking up. An argument ensued and thus a POV-esque page was born Mosquito-001 22:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The page is biased in favor of Escalante to the point of being just plain wrong. One of its sources is the Reason essay, which is typically sloppy work written to bolster a particular ideology. (In this case, libertarian ideology, but it doesn't really matter which ideology.) Of course the most famous source of all is the movie Stand and Deliver, which is also biased in typical Hollywood fashion.

A much better source is Jay Matthews' book, The Best Teacher in America. Matthews is another big fan of Escalante, as the title suggests. But he is also honest. I personally was surprised and disgusted by the Escalante that he described. If I ever find time, I might edit this biography page to make it more truthful. Greg Kuperberg 22:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)