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David Labaree

@dlabaree.bsky.social
200 followers 34 following 570 posts

Emeritus Stanford professor. History & sociology of US education. Last books Ironies of Schooling and Being a Scholar. Love good writing. Blog at davidlabaree.com.

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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hrishikesh Joshi — The Grim Old Days This post is an essay by Hrishikesh Joshi, a philosophy professor at University of Arizona.  It comes from his Substack, …... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/28/hrishik…
davidlabaree.com
Hrishikesh Joshi — The Grim Old Days
This post is an essay by Hrishikesh Joshi, a philosophy professor at University of Arizona.  It comes from his Substack, Desert Philosophy.  Here's a link to the original. He's dealing with an issue that has increasingly drawn my interest.  It's something that we in the 21st century too often forget.  In our focus on the multiple problems in our current time, we fail to recognize how much better off we are in every possible way than people living just a few centuries before us. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
statsandsociety.substack.com/p/more-marke...
statsandsociety.substack.com
More markets/development, more altruism
North-South Italy redux
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research This is a piece I wrote about the harm that educational research has inflicted over the years. ... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/24/do-no-h…
davidlabaree.com
Do No Harm: Reflections on the Impact of Educational Research
This is a piece I wrote about the harm that educational research has inflicted over the years.  Given a track record of making things worse for school and society, educational researchers would do well to heed the wisdom in the Hippocratic Oath.  If our work often fails to make things better, we should at least strive to do no harm.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Edward Slingerland on How Drinking Is Essential to Civilization This post is a reflection on Edward Slingerland's new book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization…... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/21/edward-…
davidlabaree.com
Edward Slingerland on How Drinking Is Essential to Civilization
This post is a reflection on Edward Slingerland's new book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.  John Tierney wrote a lovely review of the book in City Journal, which I'm reproducing below.  Here's a link to the original.  After the review, I provide some of my favorite passages from the book. Here's my favorite paragraph from the book:
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Why We Need Histories of Education This is a piece I wrote a few years ago, which had been rattling around in my head for a long time. ... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/17/why-we-…
davidlabaree.com
Why We Need Histories of Education
This is a piece I wrote a few years ago, which had been rattling around in my head for a long time.  The issue is to figure out what role histories of education should play in the formation of educational policy. My short answer is that we should produce the histories we need rather than the histories we want. See what you think.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Devon Halliday — How to Write a First Page that Grabs the Reader This post is an essay by Devon Halliday. Here's a link to the original. She's exploring an issue that I have addressed here -- the… davidlabaree.com/2026/09/14/devon-h…
davidlabaree.com
Devon Halliday — How to Write a First Page that Grabs the Reader
This post is an essay by Devon Halliday. Here's a link to the original. She's exploring an issue that I have addressed here -- the importance of making the first page of anything you're writing a real grabber.  This is particularly a problem for academic writers, who tend to hold back the good stuff -- the key point you want to make and why it matters -- until late in the paper, after all of the throat clearing, lit review, research methodology, and detailed data analysis.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
wapo.st/4ypu8IB
wapo.st
Opinion | How realism gets the world profoundly wrong
There’s a better version than the one you studied in poli-sci.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
No Exit: Public Education as an Inescapably Public Good This post is a piece I originally published in a 2000 book honoring David Tyack, Reconstructing the Good in Education: Coping with Intractable… davidlabaree.com/2026/09/10/no-exit…
davidlabaree.com
No Exit: Public Education as an Inescapably Public Good
This post is a piece I originally published in a 2000 book honoring David Tyack, Reconstructing the Good in Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas. which was edited by Larry Cuban and Dorothy Shipps.  Here's a link to a PDF of the chapter.  I republished it as a chapter in my recent book, The Ironies of Schooling. A few years ago I did a short…
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
substack.com
Nicholas Gruen (@nicholasgruen)
Well that's the funniest, cleverest thing I've seen in weeks.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Devon Halliday — Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot This post is an essay by Devon Halliday, "Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot," recently published in her Substack. ... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/07/devon-h…
davidlabaree.com
Devon Halliday — Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot
This post is an essay by Devon Halliday, "Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot," recently published in her Substack.  Here's a link to the original. I'm less interested in her critique of literary fiction, which I generally don't read, than in her tight focus on the need for writers to grab the reader on the very first page.  I learned this during my brief and unhappy stint as a newspaper reporter (don't ask). 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
OPINION: It’s time to stop teaching the fun out of childhood and let kids be kids. Give them a ball and get out of their way For most of human history, kids learned how to become functioning adults with no formal classrooms, lessons or teachers hechingerreport.org/opinion-its-...
hechingerreport.org
OPINION: It’s time to stop teaching the fun out of childhood and let kids be kids. Give them a ball and get out of their way
For most of human history, kids learned how to become functioning adults with no formal classrooms, lessons or teachers
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The Grim Old Days desertphilosophy.substack.com/p/the-grim-o...
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
#126. Sticking Our Collective Heads in the Sand Why are we adults so unable to see (or say?) that school is a (the?) major cause of children’s psychological suffering? petergray.substack.com/p/126-sticki...
petergray.substack.com
#126. Sticking Our Collective Heads in the Sand
Why are we adults so unable to see (or say?) that school is a (the?) major cause of children’s psychological suffering?
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The Ironies of Schooling This post is an overview of the book I published two years ago.  It’s available on Amazon both as an…... davidlabaree.com/2026/09/03/the-iro…
davidlabaree.com
The Ironies of Schooling
This post is an overview of the book I published two years ago.  It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and a paperback.  The title is The Ironies of Schooling. It's available as both an e-book and paperback.  As I did with my earlier book, Being a Scholar, I published this one myself using Kindle Direct Publishing. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Catch-22 This post is a tribute to one of the great books of the last century and for me the greatest book about war, Joseph Heller's…... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/31/catch-2…
davidlabaree.com
Catch-22
This post is a tribute to one of the great books of the last century and for me the greatest book about war, Joseph Heller's Catch-22.  Published in 1961 it became an instant bestseller.  Two years ago I highlighted another bestseller and first novel from the same period, Mrs. Bridge by Evans Connell, which was published in 1959.  Here's a…
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The federal government owns 27% of the land in the US, including 45% of California.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/08/30/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Women Don’t Quit. We Should.
Women are eager disciples of the “Never give up” dogma. But if we treat persevering and quitting as opposites, we lose.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Advice for New PhD Students This post is a piece I published several years ago in Inside Higher Ed.  Here's a…... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/27/advice-…
davidlabaree.com
Advice for New PhD Students
This post is a piece I published several years ago in Inside Higher Ed.  Here's a link to the original. Advice for New Ph.D. Students David F. Labaree Entering into a Ph.D. program is a challenging endeavor for anyone, so I thought I’d pass on a little advice to those of you beginning such a program about how to best navigate your new environment. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Steven Pinker — The Euphemism Treadmill This post is an op-ed that Steven Pinker published in the New York Times in 1994. ... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/24/steven-…
davidlabaree.com
Steven Pinker — The Euphemism Treadmill
This post is an op-ed that Steven Pinker published in the New York Times in 1994. Here's a link to the original. It's about a tendency toward euphemism that was in its infancy back then but has how now become the new norm.  The bewildering feature of political correctness is the mandated replacement of formerly unexceptionable terms by new ones: "Negro" by "black" by "African-American"; "Spanish-American" by "Hispanic" by "Latino"; "slum" by "ghetto" by "inner city" by, according to The Los Angeles Times, "slum" again.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Writing as an Exercise in Arrogance and Humility This post is a piece of mine that was published a few years ago in Inside Higher Ed…... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/20/writing…
davidlabaree.com
Writing as an Exercise in Arrogance and Humility
This post is a piece of mine that was published a few years ago in Inside Higher Ed.  Here’s a link to the original.  It's also included in my newish book, Being a Scholar. It’s about an inherent tension in the act of writing between arrogance and humility. AN EXERCISE IN ARROGANCE AND HUMILITY TO BE A GOOD ACADEMIC WRITER, YOU MUST DEPLOY A JUDICIOUS MIX OF TWO CONTRADICTORY TRAITS THAT ARE A DISASTER BY THEMSELVES BUT TOGETHER MAKE MAGIC…
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Cartoons about Academic Research This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about the nature of academic research.  All of them are from the website ... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/17/cartoon…
davidlabaree.com
Cartoons about Academic Research
This post is a collection of some favorite cartoons about the nature of academic research.  All of them are from the website PhD, which stands for Piled Higher and Deeper.  The author is Jorge Cham, who got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and then taught at Cal Tech. Enjoy!
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Two stories about human nature weighed on my soul when I was young: Kitty Genovese and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both carried the same grim lesson: people are monsters. Be more suspicious, frightened, and cynical. And both stories, as taught to me, were bullshit. substack.com/@glukianoff/...
substack.com
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
x.com/simonmaechli...
x.com
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Being a Scholar This post is an overview of the book I published several years ago.  It’s available on Amazon both as an…... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/13/being-a…
davidlabaree.com
Being a Scholar
This post is an overview of the book I published several years ago.  It’s available on Amazon both as an e-book and a paperback.  The title is Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life.   Below is the book’s introduction, which provides the rationale for the book and summarizes the eleven pieces that you will find there.  
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The French are more depressed than we are
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Carl Hendrick — AI Automates Scut Work But Requires Increased Human Supervision This post is an essay by Carl Hendrick published on his Substack, The Learning Dispatch.  ... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/10/carl-he…
davidlabaree.com
Carl Hendrick — AI Automates Scut Work But Requires Increased Human Supervision
This post is an essay by Carl Hendrick published on his Substack, The Learning Dispatch.  Here's a link to the original. In it he develops a pleasingly optimistic argument about the increasing role that humans will have to play in the emerging world of artificial intelligence.  Given all the gloom and doom surrounding the subject, I find it heartening that a serious learning scientist sees a bright future for human cognition.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Course Syllabus: History of Higher Education in the US This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of Higher Education in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School… davidlabaree.com/2026/08/06/course-…
davidlabaree.com
Course Syllabus: History of Higher Education in the US
This post contains all of the material for the class on the History of Higher Education in the US that I taught for at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last 15 years.  In retirement I wanted to make the course available on the internet to anyone who is interested.  If you are a college teacher, feel free to use any of it in whole or part. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
open.substack.com/pub/arenains...
open.substack.com
Pricing Meetings
Why organizations should account for attention as carefully as they account for money.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Toke Richstein — Who Gets to Decide What Matters Most? This post is an essay by Toke Reichstein from his Substack. Here's a link to the original.... davidlabaree.com/2026/08/03/toke-ri…
davidlabaree.com
Toke Richstein — Who Gets to Decide What Matters Most?
This post is an essay by Toke Reichstein from his Substack. Here's a link to the original. The key issue is the title: "Who Gets to Decide What Matters Most?"  In the course of this essay, he deploys economics at its best in trying to sort out this problem.   He shows that simplistic approaches to setting social priorities bring a ton of unintended consequences. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
How We Speak Has Gotten Extravagant. Literally. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How We Speak Has Gotten Extravagant. Literally. (Gift Article)
We don’t speak just to say something. We speak to be heard.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism This post is a set of slides for a talk I gave recently, "The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism."... davidlabaree.com/2026/07/30/the-ai-…
davidlabaree.com
The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism
This post is a set of slides for a talk I gave recently, "The AI Challenge to Education and the Triumph of Credentialism." It's an effort to put the challenge that artificial intelligence poses for American education in historical perspective.  Today, students can have AI do course readings for them and then write the required papers for them as well.  Soon, students will be able to hire an AI agent to sign into their account in the college course management system (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.), do all the readings, watch all the lectures, and submit all the papers -- without the student ever having to get out of bed. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Katy Purviance — Schools Don’t Just Fail the Kids Who Struggle. They Are Run by the Kids Who Didn’t. This post is an essay by Katy Purviance from her Substack "the… davidlabaree.com/2026/07/27/katy-pu…
davidlabaree.com
Katy Purviance — Schools Don’t Just Fail the Kids Who Struggle. They Are Run by the Kids Who Didn’t.
This post is an essay by Katy Purviance from her Substack "the joy of learning." Here's a link to the original.   She's exploring an issue that has became increasingly interesting to me: the damage that schooling can do to many students, especially boys (see here and here).  The problem is the unnatural process that schooling inflicts on students -- forcing them to sit quietly at their desks for 6 hours a day, 180 days a year, over 12 years. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...
wsj.com
Essay | Is It Time to ‘Liquidate’ the Study of Sociology?
Sociology has long been tasked with investigating society’s most pressing challenges. But these days, sociologists’ greatest obstacle may be themselves.
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Palo Alto ranks fifth for most stressed parents by zip code
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Geezer rockers
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Know It Before You Mess With It This post is the text of a keynote address I gave on July 14 (Bastille Day!) at the Building Blackboard Together 2026 conference in Dallas.... davidlabaree.com/2026/07/23/know-it…
davidlabaree.com
Know It Before You Mess With It
This post is the text of a keynote address I gave on July 14 (Bastille Day!) at the Building Blackboard Together 2026 conference in Dallas. This is an annual event hosted by Blackboard -- the learning management systems (LMS) company -- which brings together the Blackboard staff and the system's users at colleges and universities to talk about new developments in the company's LMS. 
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The people most harmed by school, the ones who disengaged, dropped out, or barely survived it, almost never return to run it. The system staffs its leadership entirely with people who believe it never harmed them, then treats their confidence as proof. open.substack.com/pub/katypurv...
open.substack.com
Schools Don't Just Fail the Kids Who Struggle. They Are Run by the Kids Who Didn't.
An open letter to every educator who loved school, written on behalf of those who didn't
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The Odyssey as the story of life after the Bronze Age collapse open.substack.com/pub/stevenmi...
open.substack.com
The Odyssey Is Not a Story About PTSD
It Is a Story About Life After the End of a World
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
David Cohen — Teaching Practice: Plus Ca Change This post is a classic essay by David Cohen.  The version I'm reproducing here comes from a conference paper he prepared for the Benton Center at University of… davidlabaree.com/2026/07/20/david-c…
davidlabaree.com
David Cohen — Teaching Practice: Plus Ca Change
This post is a classic essay by David Cohen.  The version I'm reproducing here comes from a conference paper he prepared for the Benton Center at University of Chicago.  Here's a link to the original.  An earlier and shorter version was published as a chapter in 1988 in a book edited by Philip Jackson, Contributing  to  Educational  Change: Perspectives on Research and Practice…
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The real cost of attending college is falling open.substack.com/pub/findinge...
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
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David Labaree @dlabaree.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
C02 levels, then and now
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