This post is the revised version of an invited lecture I gave in 2003 at the 25th annual meeting of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was later published in Paedagogica Historica; here's a link to the PDF. It's the the of the love affair between … Continue reading Progressivism and Ed Schools — An American Romance
This post is a classic essay by Philip Jackson from his 1974 book, Life in Classrooms. Here's a link to the original. To me, it's the best piece that has ever been written about "the daily grind" that students experience in elementary classrooms, which I often used in my classes. It's all about the hidden … Continue reading Philip Jackson — The Daily Grind
This post is a piece I wrote for Kappan, published in the March 2020 edition. Here’s a link to the PDF. It was also reprinted in my latest book, The Ironies of Schooling. Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But here I make a case for these characteristics … Continue reading Two Cheers for School Bureaucracy
This post is a recent essay by Brian Klass. Here's a link to the original. It's on an issue I've explored on this blog, the current dysfunctional policy emphasis on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness. Klass's term for efficiency is optimization. The core of the story is that resilient and effective social and economic … Continue reading Brian Klass — Against Optimization
This post is a piece I published in Quartz in 2017. Here’s a link to the original. It’s an effort to explore the distinctively populist character of American higher education, drawing on my book, A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education. The idea is that a key to understanding the strong public support that … Continue reading How Football Helped Make US Universities Great
This post is an essay by River Page about how we don't need more Tiger Moms, which appeared recently in The Free Press. Here's a link to the original. The point is that it's very unhealthy to promote a social and educational system that stresses high academic achievement over other competing values. Education is important but … Continue reading River Page — We Don’t Need More Tiger Moms
This post is a recent essay by Beckie Supiano from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. There's been a lot written lately about the effect that the pandemic had on student learning, and this piece picks up on some of that analysis. But what I find so compelling about this piece … Continue reading How School Reform Deformed Student Learning
This post is a piece by Frank Bruni from the Times. Here's a link to the original. It's the new year, so it's time to take a moment to celebrate some the best writing that appeared in the last year. This is what Bruni has done here. In particular, he shows us his favorite sentences. I … Continue reading Frank Bruni — The Best Sentences of 2024
on Getting It Wrong — Rethinking a Life in ScholarThis post is an overview of my life as a scholar. I presented an oral version in my job talk at Stanford in 2002. The idea was to make sense of the path I’d taken in my scholarly writing up to that point. What were the … Continue reading Getting It Wrong — Rethinking a Life in Scholarship
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 