This post is a piece I that came out in 2021 as a chapter in a book edited by Kyle Steele, New Perspectives on the Twentieth Century American High School. The book was published by Palgrave Macmillan as part a series edited by Bill Reese and John Rury on Historical Studies in Education. Here is a link … Continue reading Politics and Markets: The Enduring Dynamics of the US System of Schooling
This post is Gary Smith's modest proposal on "How to fix college finances." His answer: "Eliminate faculty, then students." It appeared as a guest essay recently in the Washington Post. Here's a link to the original. Enjoy this ride into the wonderful world of Jonathan Swift. How to fix college finances? Eliminate faculty, then students. By Gary … Continue reading A Modest Proposal
This post is a piece I published in 2021 in Kappan. Here’s a link to the original. It is now a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. In this essay, I explore an issue about the “grammar of schooling” that bothered me over the years as I was teaching about this subject. … Continue reading The Dynamic Tension at the Core of the Grammar of Schooling
This post is an op-ed that Steven Pinker published in the New York Times in 1994. Here's a link to the original. It's about a tendency toward euphemism that was in its infancy back then but has how now become the new norm. The bewildering feature of political correctness is the mandated replacement of formerly unexceptionable … Continue reading Steven Pinker — The Euphemism Treadmill
This post is a new essay of mine that was published two years ago in Kappan. Here's a link to the original. And here's a link to the pdf. It is also reprinted as a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. The essay focuses on an issue I've been thinking about for years, … Continue reading The Fraught Connection between State and School
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about the nature of academic research. All of them are from the website PhD, which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. The author is Jorge Cham, who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and then taught at Cal Tech. Enjoy!
This post is an op-ed that Deborah Malizia and I just published in the San Jose Mercury News. Here's a link to the original. It follows up on an earlier op-ed we did on the subject. Schools’ shift from community to competition harms our youth U.S. education system created in the 19th century to serve the … Continue reading School’s Shift from Community to Competition Can Harm Our Youth
This post is a tribute to one of the great books of the last century and for me the greatest book about war, Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Published in 1961 it became an instant bestseller. Two years ago I highlighted another bestseller and first novel from the same period, Mrs. Bridge by Evans Connell, which was … Continue reading Catch-22
This post is a paper I published Educational Theory in 2008. Here’s a link to the original. In is included as a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. In this essay, I examine the paradox of educationalization in the American context. I argue that, like most modern Western societies, the United States has displayed a … Continue reading The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the US
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 