David F. Labaree

David Labaree may well be the most perceptive analyst of American education currently working in the field. In this book, Professor Labaree considers the transformation of knowledge, packaged and sold in this country as education, from a public good to a consumer commodity. The mention of the "credentials race" in the book's subtitle tells the story, and if you are interested in the subject, it is a compelling tale. What I found most interesting about the analysis contained herein was its prescience. In 1991, when I started college, I was keenly aware of the numerous diploma mills in post-secondary education in the United States, and avoided them accordingly. Now that I have (regrettably) earned a degree from one of them, and watched these same "institutions" (that is a noun I use most charitably when describing these schools) duplicate and flourish, I can read a book like this and understand exactly what it addresses. If Allen Bloom had wanted to study seriously the cheapening and commodification of knowledge in American education rather than indulging in the hyperbolic exercise in hand wringing that is The Closing of the American Mind, he would have written this book. Very highly recommended.… (altro)

This is an extremely cogent analysis of the reasons that education schools are ridiculed as lacking intellectual depth and seriousness. Teachers may want to read, in particular, chapter three, which brings to bear the tools of academic sociological analysis on the relations between teachers and their charges; this is simply one of the best explanations of the stresses teachers face in their professional practice I've yet seen, and ought to be read by demagogues, political hacks (I'm thinking of you here, Joel Klein) and others who blame teachers for our current educational malaise.… (altro)