This post is an analysis of alternative theories for explaining the historical development of American schooling. It was published in 2014 in the Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy. Here's a link to a pdf of the original. I wrote it as a way to frame the major theories of schooling for students in my … Continue reading Theories of the Historical Development of American Schooling
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
This post is the text of a lecture I gave in 2013 at the annual meeting of the John Dewey Society. It was published the following year in the Society's journal, Education and Culture. Here's a link to the published version. The story I tell here is not a philosophical … Continue reading College: What Is It Good For?
Today I am posting a piece I wrote in 1995. It was the foreword to a book by David K. Brown, Degrees of Control: A Sociology of Educational Expansion and Occupational Credentialism. I have long been interested in credentialing theory, but this is the only place where I ever tried to spell out in detail … Continue reading How Credentialing Theory Explains the Extraordinary Growth in US Higher Ed in the 19th Century
This post is a commentary on Colin Woodard's book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Woodard argues that the United States is not a single national culture but a collection of national cultures, each with its own geographic base. The core insight for this analytical approach comes from … Continue reading Colin Woodard: Maps that Show the Historical Roots of Current US Political Faultlines
In 1932, Willard Waller published his classic book, The Sociology of Teaching. For years I used a chapter from it ("The Teacher-Pupil Relationship") as a way to get students to think about the problem that most frightens rookie teachers and that continues to haunt even the most experienced practitioners: how to gain and maintain control … Continue reading Willard Waller on the Power Struggle between Teachers and Students
This post is a piece I wrote for Kappan, published in the March 2020 edition. Here's a link to the PDF. Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But here I make a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. … Continue reading Two Cheers for School Bureaucracy
In this post, I explore a key issue in understanding the social role that schools play: Why do we need schools anyway? For thousands of years, children grew up learning the skills, knowledge, and values they would need in order to be fully functioning adults. They didn't need schools to accomplish this. The family, the … Continue reading What Schools Can Do that Families Can’t: Robert Dreeben’s Analysis
This post is an overview of the 2014 book by Stanford classicist Ian Morris, War! What Is It Good For? In it he makes the counter-intuitive argument that over time some forms of war have been socially productive. In contrast with the message of 1970s song by the same name, war may in fact be good … Continue reading War! What Is It Good For?
This blog post is a tribute to the classic paper by Mary Metz, "Real School." In it she shows how schools follow a cultural script that demonstrates all of the characteristics we want to see in a school. The argument, in line with neo-institutional theory (see this example by Meyer and Rowan), is that schools … Continue reading Mary Metz: Real School
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 