This post is an essay about the formation of the US common school system, which was responsible for forming the American republic during a period in the early 19th century when its survival was in doubt. The essay is an extended excerpt from the second chapter of my book, Someone Has to Fail. I'm posting … Continue reading Formation of the US Common School System
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 is an essay about the historical construction of the American meritocracy, which is to say the new American aristocracy based on academic credentials. This essay is included in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. Here’s a link to the original, which was published 2020 in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal of the Historiography of Education. An overview … Continue reading Schooling the Meritocracy
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
In this paper, I explore the issue of relevance in educational research. I argue that the chronic efforts by researchers to pursue relevance is counterproductive. Paradoxically, trying to make research more relevant actually makes it less so. Drawing on an analysis by Mie Augier and Jim March, I show that this is the result of … Continue reading The Dysfunctional Pursuit of Relevance in Educational Research
This post is a piece by Gurwinder Bhogal, published in his blog The Prism. Here's a link to the original. It's a lovely collection of 30 useful principles to live by when you're trying to make sense of the world. For academics, who make their living this way, these … Continue reading 30 Useful Principles
This post is a short piece I published a while ago in Insider Higher Ed. Here's a link to the original. Scholarship Thrives on Peripheral Vision Don’t be limited by what’s straight ahead, David Labaree writes The problem with scholarly focus is that it leads where you intend to go. And this is a … Continue reading Scholarship Thrives on Peripheral Vision
