Tamson Pietsch is Associate Professor in Social and Political Sciences and Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney. This interview is based on her new book, The Floating University: Experience, Empire, and the...
educational history
Annette Gordon-Reed Reviews Alan Taylor’s New Book on Jefferson and Education
When a Pultizer-Prize-winning American historian reviews a new book from another Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian it is worth a separate post here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Taylor’s book is titled Thomas Jefferson’s Education. Here is a taste of Gordon-Reed’s review at The...
Everything Has a History, Including Parents Complaining About Their Kids’ Homework
Do you complain about your kid having too much homework? Slate‘s Rebecca Onion historicizes your complaint. Here is a taste of her piece “‘The Child is Made to Study Far, Far Beyond His Physical Strength‘”: If you find yourself stressed,...
The Author’s Corner with Robert Gross
Robert Gross is a United States History Teacher and Assistant Academic Dean at Sidwell Friends School. This interview is based on his new book Public v. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America (Oxford University Press, 2018). JF: What led...
The Founding Fathers Rejected School Choice
Earlier today University of Western Washington history professor Johann Neem visited The Author’s Corner. Yesterday he visited the pages of the Washington Post to talk more about public education. As Neem correctly notes, the founding fathers believed that public schools were...
Author’s Corner with Johann Neem
Johann Neem is a Professor of History at Western Washington University. This interview is based on his new book, Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America (John Hopkins University Press, 2017). JF: What led you to write Democracy’s Schools? JN: I...
Did John Quincy Adams Pass the Harvard Entrance Exam?
He took the exam in 1786. Over at Boston 1775, J.L. Bell tells us what happened. Here is a taste: Here’s John Quincy’s description of the test from his diary: Between 9 and 10 in the morning, I went to the...
Alan Taylor Channels Gordon Wood
By now many of you have probably read a review of Alan Taylor‘s new synthesis of the American Revolution. (We will be featuring Taylor in an upcoming edition of the Author’s Corner. Stay tuned). Writing in The New York Times,...
Vacation Days at the University of Pennsylvania–Circa 1760s and 1770s
Last night I finished working through the early trustee minutes of the College of Philadelphia, the school that would eventually become the University of Pennsylvania. For those of you who complain that you do not get enough days off from...
This Week’s Patheos Column: “Education for a Democracy”
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum made news recently when he called Barack Obama a “snob” for saying that all Americans should get a college education. He supported his attack on the president with the now popular refrain, “college is not...