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Labaree, David F.
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I am a sociologically oriented historian of education who seeks to explore some of the major processes and patterns that define the relationship between education and society in the United States. In my research, I aim to analyze the evolving institutional character of educational organizations (such as the high school, community college, education school, and university) and the evolving role of key groups that affect education (such as teachers, teacher educators, and reform movements) in the context of the broader purposes and functions of education in a liberal democracy. Within this broad approach to the subject, I have focused in the past on two major areas of study. One is the pressure exerted by markets on democratic education; the other is the peculiar nature of education schools as they have evolved over the years in the U.S. Currently, I am working on two major projects – an examination of the historically evolved nature of American higher education, and a historical analysis of school reform in the U.S.
I am currently working on two books. One is about the historically evolved nature of American higher education. A central aim of this study is to explore how the peculiar structure of the U.S. system of higher education helps explain its relatively recent rise to the top of world rankings. This system is extraordinarily complex, bringing together contradictory educational goals, a broad array political constituencies, diverse sources of funds, and multiple forms of authority into a single institutional arena characterized by creative tension and local autonomy. One tension is between the influence of the market and the influence of the state. Another arises from the conflict among three social-political visions of higher education – as undergraduate college (populist), graduate school (elitist), and land grant college (practical). A third arises from the way the system combines three alternative modes of authority – traditional, rational, and charismatic. In combination, these elements promote organizational complexity, radical stratification, broad political and financial support, partial autonomy, and adaptive entrepreneurial behavior.
The other book project is about the history of school reform in the United States. The core of the argument is this: School reform in the U.S. is better at reforming the language of education than at reforming its structure, and better at reforming its structure than at reforming its substance – teaching and learning in classrooms. That is only natural, since schools themselves are better at expressing a goal than in operationalizing that goal in a manner that might actually realize it. Schools are ways for society to express its concern about a social problem and demonstrate a desire to solve it without really doing anything serious about solving it directly. Instead we assign the problem to schools, which is a way of showing we’re not serious about it while still maintaining a strong impression that we’re on the case. Thus it follows that school reform parallels this process, focusing on discourse rather than outcomes, on form rather than substance.
Quote
"How could the most admired, imitated, and (in many ways) progressive characteristic of American education -- its focus on providing a wide array of citizens with the chance to get ahead through educational attainment -- produce so many negative consequences for both school and society? The answer, I suggest, is that the pursuit of educational advantage has inadvertently threatened to transform the public educational system into a mechanism for personal advancement. In the process, the generous public goals that have been so important in defining the larger societal interest in education -- to produce politically capable and socially productive citizens -- have lost significant ground to the narrow pursuit of private advantage at public expense. The result is that the common school has become increasingly uncommon, with a growing emphasis on producing selective symbolic distinctions rather than shared substantive accomplishments, and the community interest in education as a public good has increasingly lost ground to the individual interest in education as private property."
- from "How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning"
Education
- PhD (Sociology), University of Pennsylvania, 1983
- MA (Sociology), University of Pennsylvania, 1978
- BA (Social Relations), Harvard College, 1970
Time at Stanford
Since 2003
Professor of Education (2003 - )
Associate Dean for Student Affairs (2005 - 2008)
Chair of SHIPS Area Committee (2009 - )
Professional Experience
Assistant Professor to Professor of Teacher Education, Michigan State University (1985-2003)
Coordinator of MSU Ph.D. program in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy (1996-2001)
Courses Taught
- History of School Reform (Ed 220D)
- School -- What Is It Good For (ED 07X)
- History of Education in the U.S. (Ed 201)
- History of Higher Education (Ed 265/165)
Current Syllabus: ED 220D/HIST 258E Syllabus.pdf
Recent Publications
Labaree, David F. (2013). A system without a plan: Emergence of an American system of higher education in the twentieth century. Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 3:1, 46-59.
Labaree, David F. (2013). The power of the parochial in shaping the American system of higher education. In Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe (Eds.), Educational research: Institutional spaces of educational research (pp. 31-46). Dordrecht: Springer.
Labaree, David F. (2012). School syndrome: Understanding the USA’s magical belief that schooling can somehow improve society, promote access, and preserve advantage. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44:2, 143-163.
Labaree, David F. (2012). Sermon on educational research. Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 2:1, 78-87.
Labaree, David F. (2011). When is school an answer to what social problems? Lessons from the early American republic. In Daniel Tröhler & Ragnhild Barbu (Eds.), Educational systems in historical, cultural and sociological perspectives (pp. 77-90). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Labaree, David F. (2011). Adventures in scholarship. In Wayne Urban (Ed.), Leaders in the historical study of American education (pp. 193-204). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Labaree, David F. (2011). Citizens and consumers: Changing visions of virtue and opportunity in U.S. education, 1841-1954. In Daniel Tröhler, Thomas Popkewitz, and David F. Labaree (Eds.), Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century (pp. 168-183). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Labaree, David F. (2011). Do no harm. Teacher Education and Practice, 24:4, 434-439.
Labaree, David F. (2011). The lure of statistics for educational researchers. Educational Theory, 61:6, 621-631.
Labaree, David F. (2011). Consuming the public school. Educational Theory,61: 4, 381-394.
Tröhler, Daniel, Popkewitz, Thomas, & Labaree, David F. (Eds.). (2011). Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century: Comparative visions. New York: Routledge.
Labaree, David F. (2010). Someone has to fail: The zero-sum game of public schooling. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Labaree, David F. (2010). What schools can’t do. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie, 16:1, 12-18.
Labaree, David F. (2009). Teach For America and teacher ed: Heads they win, tails we lose. Journal of Teacher Education, 61:1-2, 48-55.
Labaree, David F. (2008). The winning ways of a losing strategy: Educationalizing social problems in the U.S. Educational Theory, 58:4 (November), 447-460.
Labaree, David F. (2007). Education, markets, and the public good: Selected works of David F. Labaree (in series: Routledge World Library of Educationalists). London: Routledge.
Labaree, David F. (2006). Mutual subversion: A short history of the liberal and the professional in American higher education. History of Education Quarterly, 46:1 (Spring), 1-15.
Labaree, David F. (2004). The trouble with ed schools. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Current Activities
President, History of Education Society (2004-2005)
Vice president of Division F (History of Education), American Educational Research Association (2003-2006)
Member of Executive Board, American Educational Research Association (2004-2005)
Conferences
Markets and American higher education: An institutional success story. Vice presidential address (Division F, History of Education) at annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco (2006).
Mutual subversion: A short history of the liberal and the professional in American higher education. Presidential address at annual meeting of the History of Education Society, Baltimore(2005).
