Does the current drive to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) into the K-12 curriculum represent a positive reform that will lead schools to educate the "whole student" and ultimately boost young people's academic success? Or is it a distracting fad that comes with high opportunity costs? Common sense and considerable…

What do K-12 schools need to do to prepare their students for adult success? This was the question that originally catalyzed the standards-and-accountability movement some 30 years ago, though it seems somehow to have gotten lost. Today the question merits revisiting, because addressing it makes a strong case for taking an integrated approach to…

Human rights are rapidly entering the academic curriculum, with programs appearing all over the country--including at Duke, Harvard, Northeastern, and Stanford Universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Universities of Chicago, of Connecticut, of California at Berkeley, and of Minnesota; and Trinity College. Most of these…

This article provides a reflective perspective on the role that research-led teaching plays in the development of future arts workers in higher education. It explores the challenges faced by lecturers developing curricula in the performing and creative arts and argues that the increasing focus on employability can conflict with universities'…

In the last issue of "American Educator," several scholars argued in favor of a common core curriculum. By common core, they meant that the curriculum should be broadly adopted (enabling improvements in instructional materials, student tests, and teacher training), but also limited (preserving instructional time for districts, schools,…

The author is a historian of education and has written often about the educational enthusiasms and fads of the past century. One of her books, titled "Left Back," tells the story of the rise and fall of one fad after another across the 20th century. In brief, what she has found is that in the land of American pedagogy, innovation is frequently…

Mike Rose points out that this is a crucial moment in the history of education in the United States. On one hand, Americans see a rhetoric of College for All, and pressure to get more racial minorities and low-income students into higher education, while the high school dropout rate stays stubbornly high near 30%. There is another rhetoric, about…

Recent education policies focus on making youth pathways more transparent while addressing skills shortage. However, there appears to be ambivalence about the target audience for "new vocational" programmes in secondary schools and how they should be organized. This paper begins from the observation that Canadian policy-makers, like…

As long as there have been public schools, there have been reformers of public schools. All too often, they have insisted on sweeping changes; enamored of their bold, new idea, they haven't considered whether anything established ought to endure. The result? A century of faddish ideas, but little real progress. Among today's most vocal reformers…

The broad enthusiasm for service-learning on U.S. campuses and in education abroad is an extremely welcome development. However, the status of service-learning is problematic institutionally and academically. It is frequently not located in mainstream academic departments or is seen as an incidental activity nor does it, for the most part, achieve…

Some philosophers of education have recently argued that educators can more or less ignore children's global self-esteem without failing them educationally in any important way. This paper draws on an attachment theoretic account of self-esteem to argue that this view is mistaken. I argue that understanding self-esteem's origins in attachment…

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) was used over a three-year period to investigate the curriculum of state schools and academies. The resulting data has shown that spectacular apparent school improvement, in terms of five or more A*-C GCSE /GNVQ passes has been largely brought about by the substitution of mainstream curriculum subjects by much…

This article presents the authors' critique of lessons proposed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21). The authors initiate a discussion about content that they hope will play out in schoolhouses and statehouses across the country. They take on a different task: they present a handful of lesson ideas from P21 that could enhance studies…

This paper argues that the modern curriculum of academic subject disciplines embodies a rationalist conception of pure, universal knowledge that does little to cultivate, humanise or form the self. A liberal education in the classical humanist tradition, by contrast, develops a personal culture or "paideia", an understanding of the self as a…

Describes how incorporating technology education into the existing elementary curriculum is placing education in the context of the real world. Suggests how to integrate technology education into the primary classroom most effectively. (JOW)