2728 books match the query 'Education' and 609 start with t

cover of The Idea and Practice of General Education: An Account of the College of the University of Chicago

The Idea and Practice of General Education

An Account of the College of the University of Chicago

The College of the University of Chicago

University of Chicago Press, 1992

Written by members of the faculty at the College of the University of Chicago, this book provides a comprehensive account of one of the most significant and successful experiments in the field of education. In 1931, the faculty undertook to determine the essentials of a general education and to devise an integrated system of essential courses that students were required to take. This book discusses that innovative curriculum and method, and includes reading lists and sample examinations. Levine's new Preface discusses the endurance of and excitement surrounding the program created during the Hutchins years.
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cover of The Idea of a Catholic University

The Idea of a Catholic University

George Dennis O'Brien

University of Chicago Press, 2002

George Bernard Shaw thought that a Catholic university was a contradiction in terms—"university" represents intellectual freedom and "Catholic" represents dogmatic belief. Scholars, university administrators, and even the Vatican have staked out positions debating Shaw's observation. In this refreshing book, George Dennis O'Brien argues that contradiction arises both from the secular university's limited concept of academic freedom and the church's defective notion of dogma.
Truth is a central concept for both university and church, and O'Brien's book is built on the idea that there are different areas of truth—scientific, artistic, and religious—each with its own proper warrant and "method." In this light, he argues that one can reverse Shaw's comparison and uncover academic dogma and Christian freedom, university "infallibility" and dogmatic "fallibility."

Drawing on theology and the history of philosophy, O'Brien shows how religious truth relates to the work of a Catholic university. He then turns to the current controversies over Pope John Paul II's recent statement, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which seeks to make Catholic universities conform to the church's official teaching office. O'Brien rejects the conventional "institutional-juridical" model used by the Vatican as improper both to faith and academic freedom. He argues for a "sacramental" model, one that respects the different kinds of "truth"—thus preserving the integrity of both church and university while making their combination in a Catholic university not only possible but desirable. O'Brien concludes with a practical consideration of how the ideal Catholic university might be expressed in the actual life of the contemporary curriculum and extracurriculum.

For anyone concerned about the place of religion in higher education, The Idea of a Catholic University will be essential reading.
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cover of The Idea of a Writing Laboratory

The Idea of a Writing Laboratory

Neal Lerner

Southern Illinois University Press, 2009

The Idea of a Writing Laboratory is a book about possibilities, about teaching and learning to write in ways that can transform both teachers and students.

            Author Neal Lerner explores higher education’s rich history of writing instruction in classrooms, writing centers and science laboratories. By tracing the roots of writing and science educators’ recognition that the method of the lab––hands-on student activity—is essential to learning, Lerner offers the hope that the idea of a writing laboratory will be fully realized more than a century after both fields began the experiment.    

            Beginning in the late nineteenth century, writing instructors and science teachers recognized that mass instruction was inadequate for a burgeoning, “non-traditional” student population, and that experimental or laboratory methods could prove to be more effective. Lerner traces the history of writing instruction via laboratory methods and examines its successes and failures through case studies of individual programs and larger reform initatives. Contrasting the University of Minnesota General College Writing Laboratory with the Dartmouth College Writing Clinic, for example, Lerner offers a cautionary tale of the fine line between experimenting with teaching students to write and “curing” the students of the disease of bad writing. 

            The history of writing within science education also wends its way through Lerner’s engaging work, presenting the pedagogical origins of laboratory methods to offer educators in science in addition to those in writing studies possibilities for long-sought after reform. The Idea of a Writing Laboratory compels readers and writers to “don those white coats and safety glasses and discover what works” and asserts that “teaching writing as an experiment in what is possible, as a way of offering meaning-making opportunities for students no matter the subject matter, is an endeavor worth the struggle.”

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cover of The Impact of College Diversity: Struggles and Successes at Age 30

The Impact of College Diversity

Struggles and Successes at Age 30

Elizabeth Aries

Temple University Press, 2023

In 2005, Elizabeth Aries chronicled what 58 Amherst College freshman—Black and white, affluent and lower-income—learned from racial and class diversity. Her study emphasized the value of campus diversity at elite colleges. Four years later, Aries interviewed the same students about their diversity experiences as they graduated. Now, eight years later, she re-interviews her participants to see how and to what extent race and class continue to play a role as they move into adulthood.  

The Impact of College Diversity details how exposure to diversity in college helped shape Black and white graduates process issues of economic and racial privilege and inequality at age 30. She investigates how college diversity experiences also facilitate the attainment of upward social mobility in lower-income students and the role that mobility played in their relationships with family and friends in their home communities. Aries further examines how interactions with peers of another race and class influenced development of citizenship skills and civic engagement, as well as Black students’ ability to cope with the challenges they faced in the professional world.  

Aries concludes her study with a discussion of why elite colleges have been beneficial in promoting upward mobility in lower-income students, and the importance of achieving equity and inclusion in making diversity initiatives successful.
 
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cover of The Impact of the War on the Schools of Red Wing

The Impact of the War on the Schools of Red Wing

Nelson Bossing

University of Minnesota Press, 1945

The Impact of the War on the Schools of Red Wing was first published in 1945. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.What happens to the American small community in periods of war and challenge, change and uncertainty? In an age of planning, why not look at the community basis for planning?With these two questions as a basis, the University of Minnesota, in 1943, began one of the most exhaustive studies of an American community undertaken in recent times. Red Wing, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River in Goodhue County was chosen as the “typical small American city.”Professors of education, economics, sociology, art, home economics, journalism, and public health joined with city officials and civic leaders in studying every aspect of the city and its people. Their findings are published in eleven bulletins, each devoted to an individual topic. The entire survey, entitled The Community Basis for Postwar Planning, was coordinated by Roland S. Vaile, former professor of economics and marketing at the University of Minnesota, and made possible by a grant from the Graduate School.The present study, The Impact of the War on the Schools Red Wing, surveys the public education system as it adapts to postwar reconstruction. The authors devote particular attention to the organization and services of schools, knowledge and attitudes of pupils about war-related matters, and impact on school curriculum and instruction.
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cover of The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

The Importance of Being Urban

Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

David A. Gamson

University of Chicago Press, 2019

From the 1890s through World War II, the greatest hopes of American progressive reformers lay not in the government, the markets, or other seats of power but in urban school districts and classrooms. The Importance of Being Urban focuses on four western school systems—in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle—and their efforts to reconfigure public education in the face of rapid industrialization and the perceived perils [GDA1] of the modern city. In an era of accelerated immigration, shifting economic foundations, and widespread municipal shake-ups, reformers argued that the urban school district could provide the broad blend of social, cultural, and educational services needed to prepare students for twentieth-century life. These school districts were a crucial force not only in orchestrating educational change, but in delivering on the promise of democracy. David A. Gamson’s book provides eye-opening views of the histories of American education, urban politics, and the Progressive Era.
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cover of The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

The Importance of Being Urban

Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940

David A. Gamson

University of Chicago Press, 2019

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

From the 1890s through World War II, the greatest hopes of American progressive reformers lay not in the government, the markets, or other seats of power but in urban school districts and classrooms. The Importance of Being Urban focuses on four western school systems—in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle—and their efforts to reconfigure public education in the face of rapid industrialization and the perceived perils of the modern city. In an era of accelerated immigration, shifting economic foundations, and widespread municipal shake-ups, reformers argued that the urban school district could provide the broad blend of social, cultural, and educational services needed to prepare students for twentieth-century life. These school districts were a crucial force not only in orchestrating educational change, but in delivering on the promise of democracy. David A. Gamson’s book provides eye-opening views of the histories of American education, urban politics, and the Progressive Era.
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cover of The Impracticality of Practical Research: A History of Contemporary Sciences of Change That Conserve

The Impracticality of Practical Research

A History of Contemporary Sciences of Change That Conserve

Thomas S. Popkewitz

University of Michigan Press, 2020

There is an alluring desire that research should lead us to find the practical knowledge that enables people to live a good life in a just and equitable society. This desire haunted the 19th century emergence of the social sciences as a discipline, then became more pronounced in the postwar mobilizations of research. Today that desire lives on in the international assessments of national schools and in the structure of professional education, both of which influence government modernization of schools and also provide for people’s well-being. American policy thus reflects research in which reforms are verified by “scientific, empirical evidences” about “what works” in experiments, and “will work” therefore in society.

The book explores the idea that practical and useful knowledge changes over time, and shows how this knowledge has been (re)visioned in contemporary research on educational reform, instructional improvement, and professionalization. The study of science draws on a range of social and cultural theories and historical studies to understand the politics of science, as well as scientific knowledge that is concerned with social and educational change. Research hopes to change social conditions to create a better life, and to shape people whose conduct embodies these valued characteristics—the good citizen, parent, or worker. Yet this hope continually articulates the dangers that threaten this future. Thomas Popkewitz explores how the research to correct social wrongs is paradoxically entangled with the inscription of differences that ultimately hamper the efforts to include.

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cover of The Improviser's Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking

The Improviser's Classroom

Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking

Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lomanno

Temple University Press, 2024

An adept improviser can find ways forward amid impasse, agency amid oppression, and community amid division. The editors and contributors to The Improviser’s Classroom present an array of critical approaches intended to reimagine pedagogy through the prisms of activism, reciprocity, and communal care.

Demonstrating how improvisation can inform scenes of teaching and learning, this volume also outlines how improvisatory techniques offer powerful, if not vital, tools for producing connection, creativity, accompaniment, reciprocity, meaningful revelation, and lifelong curiosity.

The Improviser's Classroom champions activist pedagogies and the public work essential for creating communities bound together by reciprocal care and equity.

Contributors: Sibongile Bhebhe, Judit Csobod, Michael Dessen, jashen edwards, Kate Galloway, Tomie Hahn, Petro Janse van Vuuren, Lauren Michelle Levesque, George Lipsitz, Rich Marsella, Tracy McMullen, Hafez Modirzadeh, Ed Sarath, Joe Sorbara, Jesse Stewart, Ellen Waterman, Carey West, and the editors
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cover of The Inclusion Illusion: How Children with Special Educational Needs Experience Mainstream Schools

The Inclusion Illusion

How Children with Special Educational Needs Experience Mainstream Schools

Rob Webster

University College London, 2022

An examination of contemporary inclusive pedagogy and how it is failing students with special educational needs and disabilities. 

Inclusion conjures images of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) learning in classes alongside peers in a mainstream school. For pupils in the UK with high-level SEND, who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (formerly a Statement), this implies an everyday educational experience similar to that of their typically developing classmates. Yet in vital respects, they are worlds apart.
 
Based on the UK’s largest observation study of pupils with high-level SEND, this book exposes how attendance at a mainstream school is no guarantee of receiving a mainstream education. Observations of nearly 1,500 lessons in English schools show that these students’ everyday experience of school is characterized by separation and segregation. Furthermore, interviews with nearly five hundred pupils, parents, and school staff reveal the effect of this marginalization on the quality of their education. The book argues that inclusion is an illusion. The way schools are organized and how classrooms are composed creates a form of structural exclusion that preserves mainstream education for typically developing pupils and justifies offering a diluted pedagogy for pupils with high-level SEND. Ultimately, the book suggests why a more authentic form of inclusion is needed, and how it might be achieved.
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cover of The Inclusive Work of Global Rhetorics

The Inclusive Work of Global Rhetorics

Moushumi Biswas

Utah State University Press, 2026

Envisioning the next step in the ongoing scholarly movement advocating inclusion of global rhetorics in the composition curriculum, The Inclusive Work of Global Rhetorics demonstrates that the question of why or whether to incorporate tenets of global/non-Western rhetorics into writing is long past. The focus has shifted to how to make this change—and to the best practices of such inclusion.

This book showcases the latest scholarship on rethinking the borders of traditional rhetorical studies, which are typically drawn within Greco-Roman and Euro-American confines, with the objective of incorporating non-Eurocentric rhetorical tenets into rhetoric and composition. This work fosters a spirit of inclusivity in the writing classroom by incorporating the many ways of rhetorical thinking gleaned from global/non-Western communication practices while also reflecting on their situatedness and intersectionalities.

Sitting at the crossroads of theory, methodology, and pedagogy, The Inclusive Work of Global Rhetoric puts in perspective a landmark moment in rhetorical studies, a time when it has become imperative to acknowledge the proliferation of non-Western rhetorical traditions in rhetorical practices and communication. Providing heuristics for creating inclusive composition/rhetoric pedagogy, this book serves students, teachers, scholars, and researchers of rhetoric, writing, and communication as both a classroom guide and a reference at the undergraduate and graduate level

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cover of The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute

The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue

Voices and Images from Sherman Institute

Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Matthew Sakiestewa, and Lorene Sisquoc

Oregon State University Press, 2012

The first collection of writings and images focused on an off-reservation Indian boarding school, The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue shares the fascinating story of this flagship institution, featuring the voices of American Indian students.

In 1902, the federal government opened Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, to transform American Indian students into productive farmers, carpenters, homemakers, nurses, cooks, and seamstresses. Indian students helped build the school and worked daily at Sherman; teachers provided vocational education and placed them in employment through the Outing Program.

Contributors to The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue have drawn on documents held at the Sherman Indian Museum to explore topics such as the building of Sherman, the school’s Mission architecture, the nursing program, the Special Five-Year Navajo Program, the Sherman cemetery, and a photo essay depicting life at the school. 

Despite the fact that Indian boarding schools—with their agenda of cultural genocide— prevented students from speaking their languages, singing their songs, and practicing their religions, most students learned to read, write, and speak English, and most survived to benefit themselves and contribute to the well-being of Indian people.

Scholars and general readers in the fields of Native American studies, history, education, public policy, and historical photography will find
The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue an indispensable volume.
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cover of The Individual Education Planning Committee: A Step in the History of Special Education

The Individual Education Planning Committee

A Step in the History of Special Education

William M. Cruickshank, Ph.D., William C. Morse, Ph.D., and James O. Grant, Ph.D.

University of Michigan Press, 1990

This book addresses the provisions for the Individual Educational Planning Committee in Public Law 94-142 (1975). This committee is a mechanism required for every child who by reason of a disability or intellectual deviation is to be placed in one or another type of educational program of a given school district and to develop each child's individual educational plan.
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cover of The Individual, Society, and Education: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS

The Individual, Society, and Education

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL IDEAS

Clarence J. Karier

University of Illinois Press, 1986

  This is an updated version of Karier's highly regarded Man, Society,
        and Education, which focuses on the concepts of human nature and community
        throughout American educational history. For the new edition, Karier has
        added chapters on the major movements in American education from World
        War II to the present and on the major Supreme Court cases involving educational
        policy during the same period.
      "This classic volume remains a remarkable study in the history of
        ideas into which the implications for American schooling have been deftly
        woven. It is balanced, thorough, and intelligently challenging."
        --- Ann M. Keppel, College of Education, University of Hawaii at
        Manoa
      "This new edition should have great use as a primary text at the
        graduate and advanced undergraduate levels."
        --- Peter A. Sola, School of Education, Howard University
 
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cover of The Indomitable Mary Easton Sibley: Pioneer of Women's Education in Missouri

The Indomitable Mary Easton Sibley

Pioneer of Women's Education in Missouri

Kristie C. Wolferman

University of Missouri Press, 2008

Acknowledged as a significant figure in the history of women on the early western frontier, Mary Easton Sibley may be little known to many modern readers. Yet she was involved in most of the important events in nineteenth-century Missouri, pursued and practiced educational innovations, and founded a school that continues to thrive today. This first biography of Sibley sheds new light on this important pioneer.
            Kristie Wolferman retraces the course of an exciting life, beginning with four-year-old Mary’s arrival in St. Louis in 1804 when her father was appointed attorney general for the District of Louisiana—and the Eastons became one of the first American families to settle in this bustling French town. At fifteen, Mary married George Champlin Sibley, the factor of Fort Osage in Western Missouri, where the young bride lived among the Indians on the edge of the frontier and took up her teaching vocation. She then went on to found Linden Wood in St. Charles, the first college for women west of the Mississippi, and she also taught classes for African American and immigrant children. Throughout the story, Wolferman shows us a life intimately entwined with the history of the state, as Mary witnessed St. Louis in its primitive years and frontier life at Fort Osage, as well as changes in Indian policy and citizenship for former slaves.
Although Sibley’s life has been told in older accounts, Wolferman’s is the first to draw fully on Mary and George Sibley’s journals and letters, with Mary’s journal especially shedding light on her views regarding women’s social and political roles, slavery, temperance, religion, and other topics. By reconstructing Sibley’s inner life as well as her career, Wolferman depicts not merely a frontier heroine and educational pioneer but an assertive woman who did not hesitate to express unconventional views.
            Today, Lindenwood University is a major coeducational institution that continues to honor Mary Sibley’s philosophy and dedication. This biography not only brings to life one of Missouri’s most remarkable women educators but also demonstrates how her story reflects educational, religious, and social developments in both the state and the nation. The Indomitable Mary Easton Sibley recognizes her as a key player on the frontier and as a major part of Missouri’s heritage.
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cover of The Instruction Myth: Why Higher Education is Hard to Change, and How to Change It

The Instruction Myth

Why Higher Education is Hard to Change, and How to Change It

John Tagg

Rutgers University Press, 2019

Higher education is broken, and we haven’t been able to fix it. Even in the face of great and growing dysfunction, it seems resistant to fundamental change. At this point, can anything be done to save it?
 
The Instruction Myth argues that yes, higher education can be reformed and reinvigorated, but it will not be an easy process. In fact, it will require universities to abandon their central operating principle, the belief that education revolves around instruction, easily measurable in course syllabi, credits, and enrollments. Acclaimed education scholar John Tagg presents a powerful case that instruction alone is worthless and that universities should instead be centered upon student learning, which is far harder to quantify and standardize. Yet, as he shows, decades of research have indicated how to best promote student learning, but few universities have systematically implemented these suggestions.
 
This book demonstrates why higher education must undergo radical change if it hopes to survive. More importantly, it offers specific policy suggestions for how universities can break their harmful dependence on the instruction myth. In this extensively researched book, Tagg offers a compelling diagnosis of what’s ailing American higher education and a prescription for how it might still heal itself.
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cover of The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research

The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research

Edited by Lynnette Young Overby, Billie Lepczyk, and Jill Green

Intellect Books, 2025

A global exploration of dance education research, its methodologies, and its impact on the field.

The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research is a necessary resource for students, educators, and advocates, offering a broad survey of research methodologies alongside real-world applications from across the globe. This volume brings together voices from both seasoned and emerging scholars, highlighting the diversity of dance research in countries including Korea, South Africa, Jamaica, India, Brazil, Slovenia, and beyond.

Divided into four parts, the book first examines foundational research methodologies, spanning mixed-method approaches as well as innovative techniques like portraiture and a/r/tography. The second section presents dance education research in practice, exploring history, choreography, and community-based initiatives. The third part showcases international perspectives, offering snapshots of research traditions from contrasting cultural contexts. Finally, the fourth section elaborates on the role of dance in social justice, illustrating how movement-based research can drive cultural and societal change. 

A vital tool for researchers, policymakers, and educators alike, this handbook underscores the significance of dance as a transformative force in education, fostering collaboration and meaningful impact in diverse communities.
 
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cover of The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke

The Intellectual Properties of Learning

A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke

John Willinsky

University of Chicago Press, 2017

Providing a sweeping millennium-plus history of the learned book in the West, John Willinsky puts current debates over intellectual property into context, asking what it is about learning that helped to create the concept even as it gave the products of knowledge a different legal and economic standing than other sorts of property.
 
Willinsky begins with Saint Jerome in the fifth century, then traces the evolution of reading, writing, and editing practices in monasteries, schools, universities, and among independent scholars through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. He delves into the influx of Islamic learning and the rediscovery of classical texts, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the founding of the Bodleian Library before finally arriving at John Locke, whose influential lobbying helped bring about the first copyright law, the Statute of Anne of 1710. Willinsky’s bravura tour through this history shows that learning gave rise to our idea of intellectual property while remaining distinct from, if not wholly uncompromised by, the commercial economy that this concept inspired, making it clear that today’s push for marketable intellectual property threatens the very nature of the quest for learning on which it rests.
 
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cover of The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation

The Intimate University

Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation

Nancy Abelmann

Duke University Press, 2009

The majority of the 30,000-plus undergraduates at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign—including the large population of Korean American students—come from nearby metropolitan Chicago. Among the campus’s largest non-white ethnicities, Korean American students arrive at college hoping to realize the liberal ideals of the modern American university, in which individuals can exit their comfort zones to realize their full potential regardless of race, nation, or religion. However, these ideals are compromised by their experiences of racial segregation and stereotypes, including images of instrumental striving that set Asian Americans apart. In The Intimate University, Nancy Abelmann explores the tensions between liberal ideals and the particularities of race, family, and community in the contemporary university.

Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research with Korean American students at the University of Illinois and closely following multiple generations of a single extended Korean American family in the Chicago metropolitan area, Abelmann investigates the complexity of racial politics at the American university today. Racially hyper-visible and invisible, Korean American students face particular challenges as they try to realize their college dreams against the subtle, day-to-day workings of race. They frequently encounter the accusation of racial self-segregation—a charge accentuated by the fact that many attend the same Evangelical Protestant church—even as they express the desire to distinguish themselves from their families and other Korean Americans. Abelmann concludes by examining the current state of the university, reflecting on how better to achieve the university’s liberal ideals despite its paradoxical celebration of diversity and relative silence on race.

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cover of The Journey Before Us: First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College

The Journey Before Us

First-Generation Pathways from Middle School to College

Laura Nichols

Rutgers University Press, 2020

More students are enrolling in college than ever before in U.S. history. Yet, many never graduate. In The Journey Before Us, Laura Nichols examines why this is by sharing the experiences of aspiring first-generation college students as they move from middle-school to young adulthood. By following the educational trajectories and transitions of Latinx, mainly second-generation immigrant students and analyzing national data, Nichols explores the different paths that students take and the factors that make a difference. The interconnected role of schools, neighborhoods, policy, employment, advocates, identity, social class, and family reveal what must change to address the “college completion crisis.” Appropriate for anyone wanting to understand their own educational journey as well as students, teachers, counselors, school administrators, scholars, and policymakers, The Journey Before Us outlines what is needed so that education can once again be a means of social mobility for those who would be the first in their families to graduate from college.
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cover of The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning

The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning

James Chandler

Prickly Paradigm Press, 2026

Irony and satire in the contemporary American moment.

The second Trump administration has committed itself to upending the knowledge systems and deliberative institutions that have been essential to modern democracy, with the American university—site of scientific research and liberal education—a primary target.  In The Know-Nothing Campaign Against Higher Learning, literary and film critic James Chandler spotlights an American tradition of such hostility to intellectual life, especially the nativist movement of the 1850s that persecuted Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Ironically, Steve Bannon, the self-proclaimed “Know-Nothing vulgarian” who long ago recruited candidate Trump to his anti-intellectual crusade, is himself the great-grandson of an Irish immigrant who would have faced Know-Nothing backlash in that era.

Such dark ironies define our moment, Chandler argues, and they call out not only for intellectual critique but also for satire. Yet in the midst of the MAGA campaign’s calamitous effects on American public discourse, even satire must confront the “kayfabe” practices imported by Trump from professional wrestling, which mix illusion and reality to turn political life into a “spectacle without thought.” Drawing widely on cultural critics from Jonathan Swift and Alexis de Tocqueville to Roland Barthes, Chandler’s pamphlet offers an elegant and bracing account of the MAGA campaign against higher learning and its transformative effects on criticism and democracy itself.

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cover of The Knowledge Most Worth Having

The Knowledge Most Worth Having

Edited by Wayne C. Booth

University of Chicago Press, 1967

The Knowledge Most Worth Having represents the essence of education at the University of Chicago—faculty and students grappling with key intellectual questions that span the humanities, while still acknowledging the need to acquire a depth of knowledge in one’s chosen field. The papers collected here were delivered during an often-heated conference at the university in 1966, and include contributions from such scholars as Northrop Frye, Richard McKeon, and, of course, the dean of the college, Wayne Booth himself. Taken as a whole, they present a passionate defense of liberal education, one that remains highly relevant today.
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cover of The Landscape of Rural Service Learning, and What It Teaches Us All

The Landscape of Rural Service Learning, and What It Teaches Us All

Randy Stoecker

Michigan State University Press, 2016

Up until now, the majority of literature about service learning has focused on urban areas, while comparatively little attention has been paid to activities in rural communities. The Landscape of Rural Service Learning, and What It Teaches Us All is designed to provide a comprehensive look at rural service learning. The practices that have developed in rural areas, partly because of the lack of nonprofits and other services found in urban settings, produce lessons and models that can help us all rethink the dominant forms of service learning defined by urban contexts. Where there are few formal organizations, people end up working more directly with one another; where there is a need for services in locations where they are unavailable, service learning becomes more than just an academic exercise or assignment. This volume includes theoretical frameworks that are informed by the rural, concrete stories that show how rural service learning has developed and is now practiced, practical strategies that apply across service learning contexts, and points to ponder as we all consider our next steps along the path of meaningful service learning.
 
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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 11, 1925 - 1953: Essays, Reviews, Trotsky Inquiry, Miscellany, and Liberalism and Social Action

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 11, 1925 - 1953

Essays, Reviews, Trotsky Inquiry, Miscellany, and Liberalism and Social Action

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

This volume includes ninety-two items from 1935, 1936, and 1937, including Dewey’s 1935 Page-Barbour Lectures at the University of Virginia, published as Liberalism and Social Action.

In essay after essay Dewey analyzed, criticized, and reevaluated liberalism. When his controversial Liberalism and Social Action appeared, asking whether it was still possible to be a liberal, Horace M. Kallen wrote that Dewey “restates in the language and under the conditions of his times what Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence affirmed in the language and under the conditions of his.”

The diverse nature of the writings belies their underlying unity: some are technical philosophy; other philosophical articles shade into social and political themes; social and political issues permeate the educational articles, which in turn involve Dewey’s philosophical ideas.

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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 13, 1925 - 1953: 1938-1939, Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and Essays

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 13, 1925 - 1953

1938-1939, Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and Essays

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

This volume includes all Dewey’s writings for 1938 except for Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Volume 12 of The Later Works), as well as his 1939 Freedom and Culture, Theory of Valuation, and two items from Intelligence in the Modern World.

Freedom and Culture presents, as Steven M. Cahn points out, “the essence of his philosophical position: a commitment to a free society, critical intelligence, and the education required for their advance.”

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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 3, 1925 - 1953: 1927-1928, Essays, Reviews, Miscellany, and "Impressions of Soviet Russia"

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 3, 1925 - 1953

1927-1928, Essays, Reviews, Miscellany, and "Impressions of Soviet Russia"

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

All of Dewey’s writings for 1927 and 1928 with the exception of The Public and Its Problems, which appears in Volume 2, A Modern Language Associ­ation’s Committee on Scholarly Editions textual edition.

These essays are, as Sidorsky says in his Introduction, “framed, in great mea­sure, by those two poles of his philo­sophical interest: looking backward, in a sense, to the defense of naturalistic metaphysics and moving forward to the justification and to the implications for practice of an empirical theory.”

Dewey’s five essays on education are evidence of his continued interest in that field. Among them is the frequently quoted “Why I Am a Member of the Teachers Union,” which is still used by the American Federation of Teachers in its recruiting efforts. Other highlights of this volume include the famous ex­change between George Santayana and Dewey on Experience and Nature; an im­passioned condemnation of the mis­carriage of justice Dewey saw in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial; and a series of six articles on the Soviet Union based on Dewey’s trip to that country in 1928.

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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 5, 1925 - 1953: 1929-1930, Essays, The Sources of a Science of Education, Individualism, Old and New, and Construction and Criticism

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 5, 1925 - 1953

1929-1930, Essays, The Sources of a Science of Education, Individualism, Old and New, and Construction and Criticism

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

With the exception of The Quest for Cer­tainty (Volume 4) this fifth volume brings together Dewey’s writings for the 1929–1930 period.

During this time Dewey published 4 books and 50 articles on philosophical, educational, political, and social issues. His philosophical essays include “What Humanism Means to Me” and “What I Believe,” both of which express Dewey’s faith in man’s potentialities and intel­ligence, and a lively Journal of Philoso­phy exchange with Ernest Nagel, Wil­liam Ernest Hocking, C. I. Lewis, and F. J. E. Woodbridge. Educational writings include The Sources of a Science of Education. The contents of this volume re­flect Dewey’s increasing involvement in social and political problems.

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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 6, 1925 - 1953: 1931-1932, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 6, 1925 - 1953

1931-1932, Essays, Reviews, and Miscellany

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

Except for Dewey’s and James H. Tufts’ 1932 Ethics (Volume 7 of The Later Works), this volume brings together Dewey’s writings for 1931–1932.

The Great Depression presented John Dewey and the American people with a series of economic, political, and social crises in 1931 and 1932 that are reflected in most of the 86 items in this volume, even in philosophical essays such as “Human Nature.” As Sidney Ratner points out in his Introduction, Dewey’s interest in international peace is fea­tured in the writings in this volume.

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cover of The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 8, 1925 - 1953: 1933, Essays and How We Think, Revised Edition

The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 8, 1925 - 1953

1933, Essays and How We Think, Revised Edition

John Dewey. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston

Southern Illinois University Press, 2008

This volume also includes a collection of essays entitled The Educational Fron­tier, Dewey’s articles on logic, the out­lawry of war, and philosophy for the En­cyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and his reviews of Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas, Martin Schutze’s Academic Illusions in the Field of Let­ters and the Arts, and Rexford G. Tugwell’s Industrial Discipline and the Governmental Arts.
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cover of The Latinx Guide to Graduate School

The Latinx Guide to Graduate School

Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales and Magdalena L. Barrera

Duke University Press, 2023

In The Latinx Guide to Graduate School Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales and Magdalena L. Barrera provide prospective and current Latinx graduate students in the humanities and social sciences fields with a roadmap for surviving and thriving in advanced-degree programs. They document the unwritten rules of graduate education that impact Latinx students, demystifying and clarifying the essential requirements for navigating graduate school that Latinx students may not know because they are often the first in their families to walk that path. Topics range from identifying the purpose of graduate research, finding the right program, and putting together a strong application to developing a graduate student identity, cultivating professional and personal relationships, and mapping out a post--graduate school career. The book also includes resources for undocumented students. Equal parts how-to guide, personal reflection, manifesto, and academic musing, this book gives a culturally resonant perspective that speaks to the unique Latinx graduate student experience.
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cover of The Launching of Duke University, 1924–1949

The Launching of Duke University, 1924–1949

Robert F. Durden

Duke University Press, 1993

In this rich and authoritative history, distinguished historian Robert F. Durden tells the story of the formation of Duke University, beginning with its creation in 1924 as a new institution organized around Trinity College. As Durden reveals, this narrative belongs first and foremost to Duke University's original President, William Preston Few, whose visionary leadership successfully launched the building of the first voluntarily supported research university in the South. In focusing on Duke University's most formative and critical years—its first quarter century—Durden commemorates Few's remarkable successes while recognizing the painful realities and uncertainties of a young institution.
Made possible by a gift from James B. Duke, the wealthiest member of the family that had underwritten Trinity College since 1890, Duke University was organized with Few as president. Few's goal was to turn Duke into a world-class institution of higher education and these early years saw the development of much of what we know as Duke University today. Drawing on extensive archival material culled over a ten-year period, Durden discusses the building of the Medical Center, the rebuilding of the School of Law, the acquisition of the Duke Forest and development of the School of Forestry, the nurturing of the Divinity School, and the enrichment of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
It was also during this period, as Durden details, that such treasures as the Sarah P. Duke Gardens were created, as well as some near treasures, as seen by the failed attempt to start an art museum. Although the story of the birth of this University belongs largely to William Preston Few, other people figure prominently and are discussed at length. Alice Baldwin, who led in the establishment of the Woman's College, emerges as a fascinating figure, as do William H. Wannamaker, James B. Duke, William Hanes Ackland, Robert L. Flowers, Justin Miller, and Wilburt Cornell Davision, among others.
Although impressive growth occurred in Duke's formative years, tensions also arose. The need to strike an institutional balance between the twin demands of teaching and research, of regional versus national status, combined with continual shortages of funds, created occasional obstacles. The problem of two sets of trustees, one for the university and another for the Duke Endowment, loomed largest of all. As Few himself said, during these early years Duke successfully embarked on a long journey, for it was not until after World War II that Duke University consolidated the growth begun in the inter-war years.
An important contribution to the history of Southern higher education as well as to Duke University, this book will be of great interest to historians, alumni, and friends of Duke University alike.
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cover of The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus

The Lecherous Professor

Sexual Harassment on Campus

Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner

University of Illinois Press, 1990

How does society view and define sexual harassment of students by academicians? Does the collegiate environment exacerbate the problem and contribute to its current epidemic proportions? What can students, faculty, and administrators do about the problem? The Lecherous Professor addresses these timely issues, including the dilemma of teacher-student dating, newly devised policy statements on sexual harassment from several institutions, and faculty uneasiness about administrative directives on sexual harassment.
 
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cover of The Lettered Indian: Race, Nation, and Indigenous Education in Twentieth-Century Bolivia

The Lettered Indian

Race, Nation, and Indigenous Education in Twentieth-Century Bolivia

Brooke Larson

Duke University Press, 2024

Bringing into dialogue the fields of social history, Andean ethnography, and postcolonial theory, The Lettered Indian maps the moral dilemmas and political stakes involved in the protracted struggle over Indian literacy and schooling in the Bolivian Andes. Brooke Larson traces Bolivia’s major state efforts to educate its unruly Indigenous masses at key junctures in the twentieth century. While much scholarship has focused on “the Indian boarding school” and other Western schemes of racial assimilation, Larson interweaves state-centered and imperial episodes of Indigenous education reform with vivid ethnographies of Aymara peasant protagonists and their extraordinary pro-school initiatives. Exploring the field of vernacular literacy practices and peasant political activism, she examines the transformation of the rural “alphabet school” from an instrument of the civilizing state into a tool of Aymara cultural power, collective representation, and rebel activism. From the metaphorical threshold of the rural school, Larson rethinks the politics of race and indigeneity, nation and empire, in postcolonial Bolivia and beyond.
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cover of The Liberal Arts Advantage: Measuring the Deeper Value of a College Education

The Liberal Arts Advantage

Measuring the Deeper Value of a College Education

Edited by Richard Arum, Paul Courant, and Allyson Flaster

University of Chicago Press, 2026

Showcases new measurement strategies for assessing the impact of a liberal arts education on students and society. 

More than ever before, our society is questioning the meaning and value of higher education, and liberal arts education, in particular, has come under substantial scrutiny. Economic detractors characterize liberal arts education as impractical, claiming that college should prepare students for the workforce. Others object to the curriculum, portraying it as broken or misdirected. According to these critics, the liberal arts education being offered in the United States is marked by its rejection of core intellectual and ideological commitments.

In The Liberal Arts Advantage, a wide range of scholars argue for how and why a liberal arts education uniquely develops skill sets and expertise needed for individuals and society to thrive in the twenty-first century. The contributors address foundational questions about what liberal arts education is, how it has been conceptualized in the past, and what we can learn from its societal and professional impacts. They present compelling, unique research and new methodological tools for assessing the outcomes of liberal arts graduates. Offering grounded and well-founded arguments in favor of our education system, The Liberal Arts Advantage persuasively explains why educational leaders should reinvest in liberal arts education. 

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cover of The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet

The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet

Edna Edith Sayers

University Press of New England, 2017

Edna Edith Sayers has written the definitive biography of T. H. Gallaudet (1787–1851), celebrated today as the founder of deaf education in America. Sayers traces Gallaudet’s work in the fields of deaf education, free common schools, literacy, teacher education and certification, and children’s books, while also examining his role in reactionary causes intended to uphold a white, Protestant nation thought to have existed in New England’s golden past. Gallaudet’s youthful social and political entanglements included involvement with Connecticut’s conservative, state-established Congregational Church, the Federalist Party, and the Counter-Enlightenment ideals of Yale (where he was a student). He later embraced anti-immigrant, anti-abolition, and anti-Catholic efforts, and supported the expatriation of free African-Americans to settlements on Africa’s west coast. As much a history of the paternalistic, bigoted, and class-conscious roots of a reform movement as a story of one man’s life, this landmark work will surprise and enlighten both the hearing and Deaf worlds.
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cover of The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts

The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey

Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts

John Griffiths Pedley

University of Michigan Press, 2011

President of the Archaeological Institute of America, professor at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927, and president of the American Philological Association, Francis Kelsey was crucially involved in the founding or growth of major educational institutions. He came to maturity in a period of great technological change in communications, transportation, and manufacturing. Kelsey took full advantage of such innovations in his ceaseless drive to promote education for all, to further the expansion of knowledge, and to champion the benefits of the study of antiquity.

A vigorous traveler around the United States, Europe, and the Mediterranean, Kelsey strongly believed in the value of personally viewing sites ancient and modern and collecting artifacts that could be used by the new museums and universities that were springing up in the United States. This collecting habit put him in touch with major financiers of the day, including Charles Freer, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, as he sought their help for important projects.

Drawing heavily on Kelsey's daily diaries now held at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, John Griffiths Pedley gives us a biography that records the wide-ranging activities of a gifted and energetic scholar whose achievements mirrored the creative and contributive innovations of his contemporary Americans.

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cover of The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood

The Long Shadow

Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood

Karl Alexander

Russell Sage Foundation, 2014

A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential “inner city”—gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual “urban underclass” depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors’ groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.
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cover of The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought

The Lost Black Scholar

Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought

David A. Varel

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Allison Davis (1902–83), a preeminent black scholar and social science pioneer, is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking investigations into inequality, Jim Crow America, and the cultural biases of intelligence testing. Davis, one of America’s first black anthropologists and the first tenured African American professor at a predominantly white university, produced work that had tangible and lasting effects on public policy, including contributions to Brown v. Board of Education, the federal Head Start program, and school testing practices. Yet Davis remains largely absent from the historical record. For someone who generated such an extensive body of work this marginalization is particularly surprising. But it is also revelatory.

In The Lost Black Scholar, David A. Varel tells Davis’s compelling story, showing how a combination of institutional racism, disciplinary eclecticism, and iconoclastic thinking effectively sidelined him as an intellectual. A close look at Davis’s career sheds light not only on the racial politics of the academy but also the costs of being an innovator outside of the mainstream. Equally important, Varel argues that Davis exemplifies how black scholars led the way in advancing American social thought. Even though he was rarely acknowledged for it, Davis refuted scientific racism and laid bare the environmental roots of human difference more deftly than most of his white peers, by pushing social science in bold new directions. Varel shows how Davis effectively helped to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement.
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cover of The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s

The Lost Promise

American Universities in the 1960s

Ellen Schrecker

University of Chicago Press, 2021

The Lost Promise is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the complex roles played by professors as well as students.

The 1950s through the early 1970s are widely seen as American academia’s golden age, when universities—well-funded and viewed as essential for national security, economic growth, and social mobility—embraced an egalitarian mission. Swelling in size, schools attracted new types of students and professors, including radicals who challenged their institutions’ calcified traditions. But that halcyon moment soon came to a painful and confusing end, with consequences that still afflict the halls of ivy. In The Lost Promise, Ellen Schrecker—our foremost historian of both the McCarthy era and the modern American university—delivers a far-reaching examination of how and why it happened.

Schrecker illuminates how US universities’ explosive growth intersected with the turmoil of the 1960s, fomenting an unprecedented crisis where dissent over racial inequality and the Vietnam War erupted into direct action. Torn by internal power struggles and demonized by conservative voices, higher education never fully recovered, resulting in decades of underfunding and today’s woefully inequitable system. As Schrecker’s magisterial history makes blazingly clear, the complex blend of troubles that disrupted the university in that pivotal period haunts the ivory tower to this day.
 
 
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cover of The Madison Women: Gender, Higher Education, and Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Appalachia

The Madison Women

Gender, Higher Education, and Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Appalachia

Amanda E Hayes

West Virginia University Press, 2024

By uncovering how higher education and gender roles evolved in Appalachia over time, The Madison Women delivers a history that contradicts the stereotype of the region as hostile to education, highlighting colleges that proliferated the area in the 19th century. Indeed, many of these colleges were either coeducational or even specifically for women, ultimately contradicting another stereotype--that Appalachia is a region particularly hostile toward women. 

Incorporating captivating mini-biographies of women who attended Madison College and who went on to change their communities in ways large and small, this book reveals how the lives of its students impart lessons about history, regional culture, and how we can shape the Appalachia's future. 
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cover of The Magic Key: The Educational Journey of Mexican Americans from K-12 to College and Beyond

The Magic Key

The Educational Journey of Mexican Americans from K-12 to College and Beyond

Edited by Ruth Enid Zambrana and Sylvia Hurtado

University of Texas Press, 2015

Mexican Americans comprise the largest subgroup of Latina/os, and their path to education can be a difficult one. Yet just as this group is often marginalized, so are their stories, and relatively few studies have chronicled the educational trajectory of Mexican American men and women. In this interdisciplinary collection, editors Zambrana and Hurtado have brought together research studies that reveal new ways to understand how and why members of this subgroup have succeeded and how the facilitators of success in higher education have changed or remained the same.

The Magic Key’s four sections explain the context of Mexican American higher education issues, provide conceptual understandings, explore contemporary college experiences, and offer implications for educational policy and future practices. Using historical and contemporary data as well as new conceptual apparatuses, the authors in this collection create a comparative, nuanced approach that brings Mexican Americans’ lived experiences into the dominant discourse of social science and education. This diverse set of studies presents both quantitative and qualitative data by gender to examine trends of generations of Mexican American college students, provides information on perceptions of welcoming university climates, and proffers insights on emergent issues in the field of higher education for this population. Professors and students across disciplines will find this volume indispensable for its insights on the Mexican American educational experience, both past and present.

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cover of The Magic Screen: A History of Regent Street Cinema

The Magic Screen

A History of Regent Street Cinema

Joost Hunningher, Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, Guy Osborn and Ro Spankie

University of Westminster Press, 2015

The story of the (now restored) Regent Street Cinema is the fourth volume exploring the University of Westminster's long and diverse history. This multi-authored volume tells its history from architectural, educational, legal and cinematic perspectives and is richly illustrated throughout with images from the University of Westminster archive.
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cover of The Making of Chicana/o Studies: In the Trenches of Academe

The Making of Chicana/o Studies

In the Trenches of Academe

Acuña, Rodolfo F

Rutgers University Press, 2011

The Making of Chicana/o Studies traces the philosophy and historical development of the field of Chicana/o studies from precursor movements to the Civil Rights era to today, focusing its lens on the political machinations in higher education that sought to destroy the discipline. As a renowned leader, activist, scholar, and founding member of the movement to establish this curriculum in the California State University system, which serves as a model for the rest of the country, Rodolfo F. Acuña has, for more than forty years, battled the trend in academia to deprive this group of its academic presence.

The book assesses the development of Chicana/o studies (an area of studies that has even more value today than at its inception)--myths about its epistemological foundations have remained uncontested. Acuña sets the record straight, challenging those in the academy who would fold the discipline into Latino studies, shadow it under the dubious umbrella of ethnic studies, or eliminate it altogether.

Building the largest Chicana/o studies program in the nation was no easy feat, especially in an atmosphere of academic contention. In this remarkable account, Acuña reveals how California State University, Northridge, was instrumental in developing an area of study that offers more than 166 sections per semester, taught by 26 tenured and 45 part-time instructors. He provides vignettes of successful programs across the country and offers contemporary educators and students a game plan--the mechanics for creating a successful Chicana/o studies discipline--and a comprehensive index of current Chicana/o studies programs nationwide.

Latinas/os, of which Mexican Americans are nearly seventy percent, comprise a complex sector of society projected to be just shy of thirty percent of the nation's population by 2050. The Making of Chicana/o Studies identifies what went wrong in the history of Chicana/o studies and offers tangible solutions for the future.

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cover of The Making of The University of Michigan 1817-1992

The Making of The University of Michigan 1817-1992

Howard H. Peckham

University of Michigan Press, 1994

Within three decades of its refounding in Ann Arbor in 1837, the University of Michigan became the largest and arguably most progressive university in the United States. By century's end, its influence in higher education stretched from coast to coast- from Cornell to Stanford- and touched professional, graduate, and undergraduate education. At the end of the twentieth century, the University of Michigan continues to rank among the nation's leading universities, setting the standard for higher education in the twenty-first century.
Howard Peckham's history of the University of Michigan was published in 1967 to help celebrate the University's 150th anniversary. This new edition by Margaret and Nicholas Steneck continues Peckham's broad coverage of the University of Michigan through its 175th anniversary, covering the administrations of Robben Fleming, Harold Shapiro, and the beginning of the presidency of James Duderstadt.
The Stenecks have also reformatted and edited the earlier Peckham chapters to turn The Making of the University of Michigan into an accessible and engaging book to read or to browse, covering all aspects of campus life, from sports and students to the coming and going of faculty, administrators, and regents, with over seventy-five photos carefully integrated into the text.
Margaret and Nicholas Steneck are historians at the University of Michigan who currently teach a large and popular undergraduate lecture course on the history of the University of Michigan.
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cover of The Making of an Artist: Desire, Courage, and Commitment

The Making of an Artist

Desire, Courage, and Commitment

Kristin G. Congdon

Intellect Books, 2018

What drives an artist to create? And are there common traits that successful artists possess? In The Making of an Artist, Kristin G. Congdon draws on her years of studying and teaching art at all levels—from universities to correctional settings—to identify three traits that are regularly found in successful artists: desire, courage, and commitment. In this collection Congdon explores each of those traits, as well as giving ethnographic case studies of six visual artists from diverse backgrounds and locations whose practices embody them. Marrying the work of biography, journalism, sociology, and psychology, the book opens up the often mysterious process of making art, showing us how those characteristics play into it, as well as how other factors, such as trauma, madness, class, and gender, affect the ways that people approach the creative process.

​Powerfully insightful and fully accessible, The Making of an Artist will be an invaluable resource for practicing artists, those just setting out on artistic careers, and art teachers alike.
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cover of The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality

The Making of the Modern University

Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality

Julie A. Reuben

University of Chicago Press, 1996

What is the purpose of higher education, and how should we pursue it? Debates over these issues raged in the late nineteenth century as reformers introduced a new kind of university—one dedicated to free inquiry and the advancement of knowledge. In the first major study of moral education in American universities, Julie Reuben examines the consequences of these debates for modern intellectual life.

Based on extensive research at eight universities—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Michigan, and California at Berkeley—Reuben examines the aims of university reformers in the context of nineteenth-century ideas about truth. She argues that these educators tried to apply new scientific standards to moral education, but that their modernization efforts ultimately failed. By exploring the complex interaction between institutional and intellectual change, Reuben enhances our understanding of the modern university, the secularization of intellectual life, and the association of scientific objectivity with value-neutrality.
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cover of The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies

The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies

Donna Strickland

Southern Illinois University Press, 2011

In this pointed appraisal of composition studies, Donna Strickland contends the rise of writing program administration is crucial to understanding the history of the field. Noting existing histories of composition studies that offer little to no exploration of administration, Strickland argues the field suffers from a “managerial unconscious” that ignores or denies the dependence of the teaching of writing on administrative structures. 

The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies is the first book to address the history of composition studies as a profession rather than focusing on its pedagogical theories and systems. Strickland questions why writing and the teaching of writing have been the major areas of scholarly inquiry in the field when specialists often work primarily as writing program administrators, not teachers. 

Strickland traces the emergence of writing programs in the early twentieth century, the founding of two professional organizations by and for writing program administrators, and the managerial overtones of the “social turn” of the field during the 1990s. She illustrates how these managerial imperatives not only have provided much of the impetus for the growth of composition studies over the past three decades but also have contributed to the stratified workplaces and managed writing practices the field’s pedagogical research often decries. 

The Managerial Unconscious in the History of Composition Studies makes the case that administrative work should not be separated from intellectual work, calling attention to the interplay between these two kinds of work in academia at large and to the pronounced hierarchies of contingent faculty and tenure-track administrators endemic to college writing programs. The result is a reasoned plea for an alternative understanding of the very mission of the field itself.
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cover of The Marion Thompson Wright Reader: Edited and with a Biographical Introduction by Graham Russell Gao Hodges

The Marion Thompson Wright Reader

Edited and with a Biographical Introduction by Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Rutgers University Press, 2022

In The Marion Thompson Wright Reader, acclaimed historian Graham Russell Hodges provides a scholarly, accessible introduction to a modern edition of Marion Thompson Wright’s classic book, The Education of Negroes in New Jersey and to her full body of scholarly work. First published in 1941 by Teachers College Press, Thompson’s landmark study has been out of print for decades. Such rarity understates the book’s importance. Thompson’s major book and her life are significant for the histories of New Jersey, African Americans, local and national, women’s and education history. Drawing upon Wright's work, existing scholarship, and new archival research, this new landmark scholarly edition, which includes an all-new biography of this pioneering scholar, underscores the continued relevance of Marion Thompson Wright.
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cover of The Market Comes to Education in Sweden: An Evaluation of Sweden's Surprising School Reforms

The Market Comes to Education in Sweden

An Evaluation of Sweden's Surprising School Reforms

Anders Bjorklund

Russell Sage Foundation, 2005

A large central government providing numerous public services has long been a hallmark of Swedish society, which is also well-known for its pursuit of equality. Yet in the 1990s, Sweden moved away from this tradition in education, introducing market-oriented reforms that decentralized authority over public schools and encouraged competition between private and public schools. Many wondered if this approach would improve educational quality, or if it might expand inequality that Sweden has fought so hard to hold down. In The Market Comes to Education in Sweden, economists Anders Björklund, Melissa Clark, Per-Anders Edin, Peter Fredriksson, and Alan Krueger measure the impact of Sweden's bold experiment in governing and help answer the questions that societies across the globe have been debating as they try to improve their children's education. The Market Comes to Education in Sweden injects some much-needed objectivity into the heavily politicized debate about the effectiveness of educational reform. While advocates for reform herald the effectiveness of competition in improving outcomes, others suggest that the reforms will grossly increase educational inequality for young people. The authors find that increased competition did help improve students' math and language skills, but only slightly, and with no effect on the performance of foreign-born students and those with low-educated parents. They also find some signs of increasing school segregation and wider inequality in student performance, but nothing near the doomsday scenarios many feared. In fact, the authors note that the relationship between family background and school performance has hardly budged since before the reforms were enacted. The authors conclude by providing valuable recommendations for school reform, such as strengthening school evaluation criteria, which are essential for parents, students, and governments to make competent decisions regarding education. Whether or not the market-oriented reforms to Sweden's educational system succeed will have far reaching implications for other countries considering the same course of action. The Market Comes to Education in Sweden offers firm empirical answers to the questions raised by school reform and brings crucial facts to the debate over the future of schooling in countries across the world.
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cover of The Math Mafia: How a Persistent Group of Reformers Standardized American Education

The Math Mafia

How a Persistent Group of Reformers Standardized American Education

Emily T. Hamilton

University of Alabama Press, 2026

How Cold War urgency, academic ambition, and federal power converged to make math the cornerstone of American education policy.

The Math Mafia by Emily T. Hamilton is a historical account of mathematics education reform in twentieth-century America and how that movement played a role in shaping the broader contours of national education policy. Hamilton contends that a cohesive and well-organized community of advocates was instrumental in the rise of standardized testing and curriculum reforms, as well as federal involvement in classrooms, especially during the Cold War. By positioning mathematics as central to national strength and security, these reformers established math education as a key area of federal focus.

The “mafia” at the center of Hamilton’s story includes mathematicians, educators, and researchers from universities, as well as members of government-funded organizations such as the National Science Foundation and various educational psychology circles. Prominent figures such as Edward Begle, who led the School Mathematics Study Group during the “new math” movement, played key roles. Other influential participants include federal education officials, advocates from professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and cognitive scientists, who contributed both research and theoretical frameworks that informed curriculum design and assessment methods.

The Math Mafia offers historians, educators, policymakers, and other interested readers a compelling perspective on the legacy of the math education reforms on federal education policy in the United States and is a welcome contribution to ongoing discourse around “teaching toward the test,” educational equity, school performance, and other hot-button issues in US education today.

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