This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about life as a professor. Most of them are from the website PhD, which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. The author is Jorge Cham, who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and then taught at Cal Tech. Enjoy! ARTOONS ABOUT THE LIFE OF … Continue reading Cartoons about Faculty Life
This post is a piece I published in Teachers College Record in 2014. Here’s a link to the original. It’s an analysis of two major players in the world movement for educational accountability: OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the US No Child Left Behind law. The core argument is this: Both PISA and NCLB, I argue, … Continue reading Let’s Measure What No One Teaches
This post is a lovely essay by Christopher Hitchens, "When the King Saved God," which was published in 2011 in Vanity Fair. Here's a link to the original. The King James Bible and Shakespeare's opus are the two foundational texts of the English language. They are the linguistic styles that all English speakers recognize and … Continue reading Christopher Hitchens — An Unbeliever’s Tribute to the King James Bible
This post is an essay about the brief but glorious golden age of the US university during the three decades after World War II. American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little … Continue reading An Affair to Remember: America’s Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good
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 for something. … Continue reading Ian Morris — War! What Is It Good For?
Here's a piece I just published in Inside Higher Ed. Here's a link to the original. Hope you like it. The Aesthetic Pleasures of Academic Writing While it may seem unlikely, such writing can actually provide a great opportunity for playing with the meanings and the music of language David F. Labaree To talk, as I … Continue reading The Esthetic Pleasures of Academic Writing
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about the nature of academic research. All of them are from the website PhD, which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper. The author is Jorge Cham, who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and then taught at Cal Tech. Enjoy!
What with huge problems hanging in the balance right now, like the future of American democracy and the world order, this might be a good time to focus on a little problem, one mostly of academic interest. The issue for today is — wait for it — the trouble with American ed schools. Sounds a … Continue reading An Unlovely Legacy: The Disabling Impact of the Market on American Teacher Education
This post is a lovely essay by William Galston about the importance of character in political life, which was published recently in American Prospect. Here's a link to the original. His case in point is George Washington, whose own character was the key to American independence and the formative influence on establishing the American presidency. … Continue reading William Galston — When Character Reigned
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 