This is a piece I wrote a year ago, which had been rattling around in my head for years. The issue is to figure out what role histories of education should play in the formation of educational policy. My short answer is that we should produce the histories we need rather than the histories we … Continue reading Why We Need Histories of Education
This post is a chapter from my book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. It's a revised version of a paper that was previously published in 1992 as “Power, Knowledge, and the Science of Teaching: A Genealogy of Teacher Professionalization” in Harvard Educational Review. Here's a link to that version. The HER version of … Continue reading Rethinking the Movement to Professionalize Teaching: A Story of Status and Control
This post is an op-ed by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire recently published in the Washington Post. Here's a link to the original. They're responding to the efforts by parents and by Republican legislators to give parents veto power over what they're children are taught in public schools. Schneider and Berkshire argue that American law … Continue reading Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire — Parents Don’t Have the Right to Shape their Kids’ School Curriculum
This post is an essay by Elliot Eisner that was published in 2001 in Kappan. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. Elliot, my friend and colleague, died in 2014. Here's a link to his obituary. Elliot was one of the great academic champions for a richly humanistic view of education, the perfect … Continue reading Elliot Eisner — What Does It Mean to Say a School Is Doing Well?
This post is a piece I originally published in a 2000 book honoring David Tyack, Reconstructing the Good in Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas. which was edited by Larry Cuban and Dorothy Shipps. Here's a link to a PDF of the chapter. On August 30 I did a short post about about Albert Hirschman's … Continue reading No Exit: Public Education as an Inescapably Public Good
This post is a paper I presented as part of a panel on the politics of teacher education at the annual meeting of the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) in 2005. It was published that same year in the Journal of Teacher Education. Here's a link to the original. The paper draws … Continue reading Life on the Margins — Why Teacher Ed Has So Little Impact on Ed Policy
This is a new piece of mine, which has been brewing for a while. This issue is to figure out what role histories of education should play in the formation of educational policy. My short answer is that we should produce the histories we need rather than the histories we want. See what you think. … Continue reading Why We Need Histories of Education
