This essay by Steve Lagerfeld was published in 2021 in Hedgehog Review. Here's a link to the original. This brief piece is a striking reflection on the evolving meaning of privilege over time. In the current period of meritocratic privilege, people acquire status by getting exclusive degrees. This gives them the right to high level … Continue reading Steve Lagerfeld — A Different Sense of Privilege
This post is an essay by Scott Carlson about the high cost of staying competitive at the top of the higher education pyramid, which recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. Status is everything for universities at the very pinnacle of the highly stratified system of US higher … Continue reading The High Cost of Playing the Status Game in Elite Higher Education
This post is a stunning piece of writing by Eli Saslow, which was recently published in the Washington Post. Here's a link to the original. It's about a problem that has become increasingly apparent in contemporary American life: the downward mobility of many middle-class families. The reporter followed one 39-year old Michigan man in Lincoln Park, … Continue reading A Case of Downward Mobility
This post is an essay by Michael Lind that was published in Tablet in early January. Here's a link to the original. Lind is an astute scholar of the growing divisions in American cultural and political life, and in this essay he unpacks the nature of this divide in a manner I find both original … Continue reading Michael Lind — America’s Asymmetric Civil War
This post is a new piece by David Brooks, recently published online at Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. He's writing about the way the meritocratic elite -- grounded in exclusive educational credentials -- has upended the American class structure. The class structure of Western society has gotten scrambled over the past few decades. … Continue reading David Brooks: How the Meritocrats Broke America
This post is a piece by Cameron Hilditch that appeared in the latest National Review. Here's a link to the original. I've been exploring the problems with the meritocracy in this blog a lot in last two years, but of late I haven't been running into pieces that provided a fresh take on the subject … Continue reading Cameron Hilditch — Why Meritocracy Makes Us Miserable
This post is a paper I published in Journal of Teacher Education in 2010. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. Here's a summary of the argument: Teach For America is a marvel at marketing, offering elite college students a win-win option: By becoming corps members, they can do good and do … Continue reading Teach For America and Teacher Ed: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
This post is an classic piece by David Brooks from way back in 1996 -- The Tragedy of SID -- which was published in the Weekly Standard; here's a link to the original. SID is an ailment, Status-Income Disequilibrium. The sufferers of this malady have jobs that give them high status but low income. They … Continue reading David Brooks — The Tragedy of SID
Here's a challenge to any writer. How do you write a book about someone famous who never did anything? Craig Brown found an answer with his book, Nine-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret. In this book, he provides not a biography but a set of impressions of Queen Elizabeth's younger sister as they were recounted by … Continue reading Craig Brown – Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
This post is a piece by Thomas Edsall published in the New York Times last week. It explores in detail the recent literature about the role that declining social status has played in the rise of right-wing populism in the US and elsewhere. Here's a link to the original. The argument is one that resonates … Continue reading Thomas Edsall: The Resentment that Never Sleeps
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 