This post is a piece from the New York Times about the work of Robert McFadden, the retiring Times obituary writer. Obits are a great genre for an adept writer, who can capture the character of a famous figure in a few words and an apt metaphor. McFadden is the master of this genre, and … Continue reading Robert McFadden: A Master Class in Writing from the King of Obits
This is a short piece about the problems that professionalism poses for the academic historian. History is a different kind of subject, and too often academic rigor gets in the way of telling the kinds of historical accounts that we need. An earlier version was published in 2017 in the International Journal of the Historiography of Education. Perils … Continue reading Perils of the Professionalized Historian
This post is a recent piece by A. O. Scott from the New York Times about the muddled way in which we have long treated the concept of being "middle class." Here's a link to the original. The ‘Middle’ Is a Muddle Everybody loves the middle class. Nobody wants to be mid, or middling. “Middle” … Continue reading A. O. Scott: On the Muddle of the Middle Class
This post is a new piece I published several years ago in Kappan. Here's a link to the original. It's a response to an essay by Jal Mehta proposing a new US grammar of schooling, and it refers to a piece I wrote for Kappan with my take on understanding the roots of this grammar. … Continue reading The Attractions of Doing School
This post is a classic essay by David Cohen. The version I'm reproducing here comes from a conference paper he prepared for the Benton Center at University of Chicago. Here's a link to the original. An earlier and shorter version was published as a chapter in 1988 in a book edited by Philip Jackson, Contributing … Continue reading David Cohen — Teaching Practice: Plus Ca Change
This post is a piece I wrote for the 1989 book, American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, edited by Don Warren. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. A slightly different version appeared as a chapter in my 1997 book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. I agreed to … Continue reading Career Ladders and the Early School Teacher: A Study on Inequality and Opportunity
Patriotism has picked up a bad reputation lately. It's associated with jingoism, right wing causes, and efforts to whitewash the bad parts of American history. Meanwhile wokeness has promoted the view that Americans have nothing to be proud of, since this is a country founded on the principles of racism and settler colonialism. But, as … Continue reading Rich Cohen: The Patriotic Wisdom of Bill Murray’s Silly Speech in ‘Stripes’
This post is a paper I published in Educational Researcher in 1998. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. This is an overview of the story I'm telling: In this article, I argue that key characteristics of educational knowledge both constrain and enable the work of educational researchers, as producers of this knowledge, … Continue reading Educational Researchers: Living with a Lesser Form of Knowledge
This post is a continuation of my 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 … Continue reading Joe Moran: How to Write a Sentence, Pt. 2
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 