The Trouble with Ed Schools [Paperback]

Mr. David F. Labaree (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2006 | ISBN-10: 030011978X | ISBN-13: 978-0300119787 | Edition: 1

American schools of education get little respect. They are portrayed as intellectual wastelands, as impractical and irrelevant, as the root cause of bad teaching and inadequate learning. In this book a sociologist and historian of education examines the historical developments and contemporary factors that have resulted in the unenviable status of ed schools, offering valuable insights into the problems of these beleaguered institutions.
David F. Labaree explains how the poor reputation of the ed school has had important repercussions, shaping the quality of its programs, its recruitment, and the public response to the knowledge it offers. He notes the special problems faced by ed schools as they prepare teachers and produce research and researchers. And he looks at the consequences of the ed school’s attachment to educational progressivism. Throughout these discussions, Labaree maintains an ambivalent position about education schools—admiring their dedication and critiquing their mediocrity, their romantic rhetoric, and their compliant attitudes.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A lively and persuasive analysis of the trouble with ed schools. It will undoubtedly be discussed - and argued about- within the education policy community." Barbara Beatty, Wellesley College "Labaree is very good at laying out all the considerations that contribute to the low repute of the ed school within the university, despite the acknowledged importance of the area of practice with which it deals... a sophisticated analysis." Nathan Glazer, Education Next "An interesting sociological and historical analysis of schools of education in the U.S." Choice"

From the Inside Flap

"A lively and persuasive analysis of the trouble with ed schools. It will undoubtedly be discussed--and argued about--within the education policy community."--Barbara Beatty, Wellesley College

"This accessible, sophisticated, and insightful book should become required reading for those in teacher education and in studies of professionalism."--Thomas Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030011978X
• ISBN-13: 978-0300119787
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #243,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a professor of education at Stanford University who writes about the history and sociology of American education. I have written about the evolution of high schools ("The Making of an American High School," 1988), the growing role of consumerism in education ("How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning," 1997), and the origins and character of schools of education in American universities ("The Trouble With Ed Schools," 2004). Along the way I also published a collection of essays ("Education, Markets, and the Public Good," 2007).

My new book, "Someone Has to Fail," is an essay about the nature of the American system of schooling. We ask the schools to serve contradictory goals - to provide social access and also to preserve social advantage - and they have been willing to comply with our wishes, even though this has undercut their ability to foster academic learning. I explore why school reform has been such a failure over the years, why that's not necessarily such a bad thing, and why the main effects that schools have had on society are the unintended consequences of consumer choices rather than the planned outcomes of reform movements.

Instead of reforming schools, my aim in this book is to explore how the school system developed and how it works - in its own peculiar way. I'm not touting the system or trashing it; I'm simply trying to understand it. And in the process of developing an understanding of this convoluted, dynamic, contradictory, and expensive system, I hope to convey a certain degree of wonder and respect for the way in which this apparent model of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do. In its own way the system is extraordinarily successful, not just because it is so huge and growing so rapidly but because it stands at the heart of the peculiarly American version of the welfare state, providing us with educational opportunity instead of social equality.

For more information, see my website at http://www.stanford.edu/~dlabaree/.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poor, Poor Education Schools!, February 18, 2009

By 

Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Trouble with Ed Schools (Kindle Edition)

As a graduate student in special education, I can attest that ed schools seem to lack the rigor and respectability of other collegiate departments. The research is very "soft," the curricula are very "fad heavy" and the classes are less than rigorous (to put it nicely).

David Labaree takes this as his starting point. The first chapter argues THAT these things are true, and from there, he undertakes a multi-layered explanation of WHY they are true. To my eyes, his arguments are spot on, sensical, and very thorough.

The strongest argument for the low status of ed schools (and their lack of intellectual rigor) is the idea that ed schools straddle a delicate balance between wanthing (a) to maintain a monopoly on ability to certify new teachers, and (b) the ability to fill an ever largening demand to crank out new teachers. The former demands rigor (or at least public perception of it), while the latter demands that the curriculum is "easy" enough that ed schools can crank out teachers at a fast rate.

Labaree also writes about other factors influencing the low status of the education school. Education is an irreducibly practical, rather than theoretical, discipline and, as such, training teachers has the status of training nurses (rather than lawyers or scientists). Add to this the fact that as all of us have been educated for at least 12 years, education is the only profession that everyone has face-to-face contact with for an extended time (and hence, it is not a mysterious field like medicine or accounting, that operate "behind closed doors.")

To me, the most interesting chapter was that discussing education schools infatuation with "progressive pedagogy" a la John Dewey. Any current graduate student can attest that this is the case, but Labaree's spin is intersting. One thing, he suggests, that makes ed schools romance with progressive educaiton so strange is that progressive pedagogy has had little bearing on how schools actually work. (Their influence, he writes, has been more rhetorical than actual.) Thus, ed professors are often viewed as out-of-touch and "blinded by progressivism" that has been largely impotent in how schools actually work.

As a minor, minor criticism, one idea I wish he would have discussed was the absurdity that most education professors teach future teachers while not themselves being in the k-12 classroom. This is particularly a problem at the graduate level, where most of my fellow students are "conditionally certified" teachers being taught how to teach by those who aren't in public school classrooms. It is a bit like non-doctors teaching doctors how to practice medicine (they can teach the thoery, but are rusty on teaching the practice because they are non-practitioners.)

I enjoyed reading this book immensely. Labaree takes a very neutral and analytical tone throughout, keeping neutral on whether education schools deserve their low status. He is not interested in arguing either way, but only outlining a theory of why education schools have their low status. I find his arguments very convincing.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully written, convincingly argued, September 5, 2007

By 

MatthewT (Urbana, IL) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Trouble with Ed Schools (Paperback)

Full disclosure: I know the author personally through taking a course with him. That said, I purchased this book on a whim and ended up spending several days of a vacation reading it with the same excitement as I would a good novel. The writing is fantastic and the arguments provocative.

Many education researchers live with a sense that our work is not taken quite seriously as other fields in the academy (such as physics or medicine). Comparing schools of education to other professional schools in law and medicine, Labaree presents a convincing essay on the origins and reasons for the low status of the education school. The chapter on the romance with progressivism was especially interesting to me. As previously stated, the quality of writing is as good as it gets, with arguments likely to make you think and a nice balance between progressive and conservative thinkers.