This is an essay about the historical construction of the American meritocracy, which is to say the new American aristocracy based on academic credentials. Here's a link to the original, which was published 2020 in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal of the Historiography of Education. It is republished in my new book, The Emergent Genius of American … Continue reading Schooling the Meritocracy: How Schools Came to Democratize Merit, Formalize Achievement, and Naturalize Privilege
In this post, I introduce my new book, The Emergent Genius of American Higher Education, which is now available on Amazon. Below is the book's introduction, which provides an overview of the issues it raises and gives summaries of the 23 chapters: Introduction This book is a collection of pieces I wrote about American … Continue reading My New Book: The Emergent Genius of American Higher Education
This post is a classic piece by Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” It’s the last section of the first chapter in Capital, volume 1. This analysis had a big impact on me when I first read it in grad school, and it has shaped a lot of my own work. At … Continue reading Marx’s “The Fetishism of Commodities” and Its Implications for Education
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 an essay by Justin Sider, which recently appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. The essay is a diatribe against the prolific work of the pedagogy gurus of contemporary academe — the self-styled learning experts whose hectoring books and advice columns have become a familiar feature … Continue reading Justin Sider — The Problem with Pedagogy Gurus
This post is a favorite piece by an old friend and terrific scholar, Harold Wechsler, who sadly died a few years ago. Here’s a link to the original, which appeared in Teachers College Record in 1981. In this paper, Wechsler explores a longstanding issue in American higher education. How do students and colleges respond when the initial core … Continue reading Harold Wechsler — Group Repulsion in the History of US Higher Ed
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 an essay by Ethan Ris that was recently published in Law and Political Economy Project. Here's a link to the original. He makes a very important and often overlooked point about the nature of the American system of higher education. It is highly stratified into a dizzying array of tiers: private ranks above … Continue reading Ethan Ris: The Colleges Are Alright
This post is a classic piece by Karl Marx, “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” It’s the last section of the first chapter in Capital, volume 1. This analysis had a big impact on me when I first read it in grad school, and it has shaped a lot of my own work. At … Continue reading Karl Marx — The Fetishism of Commodities
This post is a piece I published in Kappan in 2000. Here’s a link to the PDF. It’s an analysis of why Americans have long resisted setting educational standards. Of course my timing wasn’t great. Just one year later, the federal government passed the landmark No Child Left Behind law, which established just such a system of standard mandates. Oops. This … Continue reading Resisting Educational Standards
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 