Daniel Markovits on “The Meritocracy Trap”

In this post, which I just wrote, I look at the arguments in the new book by Daniel Markovits.  It crystallizes a lot of the issues in the current debate about meritocracy and advances the argument in ways I hadn't considered before.  This is not a review of the book but a teaser to get …

Academic Writing Issues #3 — Failing to Tell a Story

Good writers tell stories.  This is just as true for academic writers as for novelists and journalists.  The story needs actors and actions, and it needs to flow.  A sentence is a mini-story.  Each sentence needs to flow into the next and so does each paragraph.  When readers finish your paper, the need to be …

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 …

Academic Writing Issues #2: Zombie Nouns

One of the most prominent and dysfunctional traits of academic writing is its heavy reliance on what Helen Sword, in the piece below, calls "zombie nouns."  These are cases when the writer takes an agile verb or adjective or noun and transforms it into a more imposing noun with lead feet.  Just add the proper …

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 …