What the Old Establishment Can Teach the New Tech Elite

This post is an essay by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, which explores the difference between the old and new American elite.  A key difference is that the old elite had a tradition of public service that is lacking today.  In part this may have been a case of noblesse oblige, the responsibility of the leading families …

Kroger: In Praise of American Higher Education

This post is my effort to be upbeat for a change, looking at what's good about US education.  It's a recent essay by John Kroger, "In Praise of American Higher Education," which was published in Inside Higher Ed.  Here's a link to the original.   Hope you enjoy it.  All is not bleak. In Praise of …

College: What Is It Good For?

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 …

Rothman: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?

In this post, Joshua Rothman addresses the problem of academic writing by comparing it to what's going on in journalistic writing.  As a journalist who was once a graduate student in English, he knows both worlds well.  So instead of the usual diatribe against academics for being obscure and deadly, he explores the issue structurally, …

Alain de Botton: On Asking People What They ‘Do’?

This lovely essay explores the most common question that modernity prompts strangers to ask each other:  What do you do?  The author is the philosopher Alain de Botton, who explains that this question is freighted with moral judgment.  In a meritocracy, what you do for a living is not only who you are; it's also …

Too Easy a Target: The Trouble with Ed Schools and the Implications for the University

This post is a piece I published in Academe (the journal of AAUP) in 1999.  It provides an overview of the argument in my 2004 book, The Trouble with Ed Schools. I reproduce it here as a public service:  if you read this, you won't need to read my book much less buy it.  You're …

Sandel: Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice

This post is an op-ed by Michael Sandel, drawing on his new book, The Tyranny of Merit.  It was originally published in the New York Times on September 2, 2020.  Here's a link to the original. He's talking about a critical problem that arises from the American meritocracy. What it's supposed to do is allocate …

Guhin: How Covid Can Change What Schools Are For

This post is a short essay by Jeffrey Guhin published on August 27, 2020 in Hedgehog Review.  In it he puts forth an argument about the purpose of schooling that resonates with some of my own work, including recent posts here such as this, this, and this.  Here's a link to the original. How COVID Can …