This is a piece I wrote about the harm that educational research has inflicted over the years. Given a track record of making things worse for school and society, educational researchers would do well to heed the wisdom in the Hippocratic Oath. If our work often fails to make things better, we should at least … Continue reading Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research
This post is a tribute to Joe Moran's lovely book, First You Write a Sentence. It's part of my ongoing series of posts about issues in writing and books on writing. What I like so much about Moran's take on the subject is that he not only gives cogent advice for how to write better, … Continue reading Joe Moran: First You Write a Sentence, Pt. 1
This post is a reflection on a book by Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In it she provides one of the most compelling and persuasive explanation for the turn toward right-wing populism in American politics and the peculiar appeal of Donald Trump. As she puts … Continue reading Hochschild — Strangers in Their Own Land
This post is a classic paper by Peter Rossi from 1987 (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 4, pages 3-20), which addresses a chronic problem in all policy efforts to change complex social systems. The social organizations of modern life are so large, so complex, so dependent on the cooperation of so many … Continue reading Peter Rossi: The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules
This post is a review essay of a book called Research Universities and the Public Good. It appeared in the American Journal of Sociology. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. Research Universities and the Public Good: Discovery for an Uncertain Future By Jason Owen-Smith. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii … Continue reading Research Universities and the Public Good
I'm posting today one of the greatest speeches ever given, from that master of rhetoric, Frederick Douglass. It demonstrates the power of language to make arguments and change hearts. In a time like ours, when rhetoric is used to promote the worst social ills, it's gratifying to see what it can do in the right … Continue reading Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”
This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach — Can We Measure What Matters Most? Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers — published in 2021 by Rowman and Littlefield. For me, this was a chance to provide a brief summary of my thoughts about … Continue reading The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling
Today I'm posting Max Weber's classic piece, "Science as a Vocation." It was originally delivered as a speech at Munich University in 1918. Its relevance for scholars today is as great as it was then, asking these questions: What does it mean to be a scientist? What are the sources and limits of scientific authority? … Continue reading Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation”
They laughed when I told them I wanted to be a comedian. Well they’re not laughing now. Bob Monkhouse Wit is notoriously difficult to analyze, and any effort to do so is likely to turn out dry and witless. But two recent authors have done a remarkably effective job of trying to make sense … Continue reading Wit, and the Art of Writing
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 