This post is a discussion of Karl Weick’s classic essay, “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems,” which was published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1976. Here’s a link to the original. The essay begins with this wonderful thought experiment: Imagine that you’re either the referee, coach, player or spectator at an unconventional soccer match: the field for the game … Continue reading Educational Organizations as Loosely-Coupled Systems
This post is an essay I wrote recently and tried to publish in several different venues, without success. So I'm publishing it here on my blog, where editorial standards are a bit more flexible. After spending many years decrying the rampant credentialism in the modern structure of schooling, I'm beginning to think about its possible … Continue reading The Upsides of Credentialism
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 set of slides for a talk I gave recently, "The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism." It's an effort to put the challenge that artificial intelligence poses for American education in historical perspective. Today, students can have AI do course readings for them and then write the required … Continue reading The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism
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 an essay by my favorite Substack author, a philosophy professor at a regional state university in Pennsylvania, who has a wonderful pen name: Hilarius Bookbinder. Here's a link to the original. In this essay, he explores the way in which the rise of AI on college campuses has exposed the credentialing game … Continue reading Hilarius Bookbinder — The End of Credentialing
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 standards mandates. … Continue reading Resisting Educational Standards
This post is an essay by Matthew Pittinsky, a sociologist of education who founded the ed tech company, Blackboard. Here's a link to the original. In it he assesses the value of my work for people in the field of educational technology, where he has constructed his career. I'm flattered by his praise, but I … Continue reading Matthew Pittinsky — Three Books, by One Author, that Every EDTech Entrepreneur Should Read…and Why
This post is an essay by Chris Sibben, which appeared recently in his Substack Mere Orthodoxy. Here's a link to the original. In it he addresses what for me is the key challenge that artificial intelligence poses for education. AI illuminates a problem at the core of the educational enterprise, which is the danger that education … Continue reading Chris Sibben — A Hollow Crown: AI and the Formation of Students
This post is an op-ed by Harvard undergrad Aden Barton, which was published a few years ago in the Harvard Crimson. Here's a link to the original. To see the graphs he refers to, click on the link. The essay explores the reasons for the recent surge in careerism among Harvard undergraduate as a way … Continue reading Aden Barton — How Harvard Careerism Killed the Classroom
