E.P. Thompson: Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism

This post is a tribute to a wonderful essay by the great British historian of working-class history, E. P. Thompson.  His classic work is The Making of the English Working Class, published in 1966.  The paper I'm touting here provides a lovely window into the heart of his craft, which is an unlikely combination of …

What Schools Can’t Do: Understanding the Chronic Failure of American School Reform

This post is the text of a lecture I gave in 2009 at the University of Berne.  It was originally published in the Swiss journal Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie and then found its way into my 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail.  Here is the link to the first published version. It's about a longstanding …

Academic Writing Issues #8 — Getting Off to a Fast Start

The introduction to a paper is critically important.  This is where you try to draw in readers, tell them what you're going to address, and show why this issue is important.  It's also a place to show a little style, demonstrating that you're going to take readers on a fun ride.  Below are two exemplary …

James March: Education and the Pursuit of Optimism

This post is aabout a 1975 paper by James G. March, which was published in, of all places, the Texas Tech Journal of Education.  Given that provenance, it's something you likely have never encountered before unless someone actually handed it to you.  I used it in a number of my classes and wanted to share …

From Citizens to Consumers — Abbreviated Version with New Conclusion about Why We Keep Trying to Reform Schools

This is an updated and abbreviated version of the lecture I posted on December 2.  It makes for an easier read, plus I've added a piece at the end trying to answer the question: Why do we keep trying to reform schools? Here's the new conclusion about the endless efforts to reform schools:   This …

From Citizens to Consumers: Evolution of Reform Rhetoric and Consumer Practice in the U.S.

This post is the text of a lecture I delivered last week in Japan at Kyoto University and Keio University.  It draws on the second chapter of my book, Someone Has to Fail (which has been translated into Japanese), and at the end I try to bring the analysis up to the present.  The subject …