This is an updated and abbreviated version of the lecture I posted on December 2. It makes for an easier read, plus I've added a piece at the end trying to answer the question: Why do we keep trying to reform schools? Here's the new conclusion about the endless efforts to reform schools: This … Continue reading From Citizens to Consumers — Abbreviated Version with New Conclusion about Why We Keep Trying to Reform Schools
Category: Education policy
From Citizens to Consumers: Evolution of Reform Rhetoric and Consumer Practice in the U.S.
This post is the text of a lecture I delivered last week in Japan at Kyoto University and Keio University. It draws on the second chapter of my book, Someone Has to Fail (which has been translated into Japanese), and at the end I try to bring the analysis up to the present. The subject … Continue reading From Citizens to Consumers: Evolution of Reform Rhetoric and Consumer Practice in the U.S.
The Chronic Failure of Curriculum Reform
This post is about an issue I've wrestled with for years, namely why reforming schools in the U.S. is so difficult. I eventually wrote a book on the subject, Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling, which was published in 2010. But you may not need to read it if you look … Continue reading The Chronic Failure of Curriculum Reform
How Dewey Lost
This week's post is a piece I presented at a conference in Switzerland and then published in an obscure book in 2010. Here's the original version. It's a story about the contest for dominance in US education in the early 20th century between pedagogical and administrative progressivism, between John Dewey and a collection of figures … Continue reading How Dewey Lost
Targeting Teachers
In this piece, I explore a major problem I have with recent educational policy discourse -- the way we have turned teachers from the heroes of the public school story to its villains. If students are failing, we now hear, it is the fault of teachers. This targeting of teachers employs a new form of … Continue reading Targeting Teachers
The Dysfunctional Pursuit of Relevance in Educational Research
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
Do No Harm
This is a piece I wrote about the harm that educational research has inflicted over the years. Given a track record of making things worse for school and society, educational researchers would do well to heed the wisdom in the Hippocratic Oath. If our work often fails to make things better, we should at least … Continue reading Do No Harm
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 