This post is an wonderful essay by Jonathan Rauch, The War on Professionalism. It was published in the current issue of National Affairs. Here's a link to the original. This essay is a celebration of professionalism, in a populist period when to call someone professional seems seems slanderous. Here's how he sets the context for … Continue reading Jonathan Rauch — The War on Professionalism
In this post, I want to explore a vivid image developed by Larry Cuban to characterize the peculiar nature of teaching and learning in schools. Scholars have frequently argued for a form of educational exceptionalism that sees schooling as a social structure that is distinctive from the normal patterns of bureaucratic organization that one sees … Continue reading Larry Cuban — Rockets Are Complicated but Schools Are Complex; Thoughts about Educational Exceptionalism
This post is a review I wrote of Steven Conn's book, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools, which will be coming out this summer in History of Education Quarterly. Here's a link to the proofs. Steven Conn. Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools. Ithaca, NY: Cornell … Continue reading Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools
Professionals, by definition, are more skilled than amateurs in any given field, but they both experience failure. And to an average observer, they appear to fail in similar ways. The practitioner is moving along nicely in carrying out his or her craft -- and then suddenly it all falls apart. The golf ball flies off … Continue reading Panicking vs. Choking: The Different Ways that Amateurs and Professionals Fail
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 