David F Labaree
Biographic Data
| ID | 252383 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David F Labaree |
| GIVEN NAMES | David F |
| FAMILY NAME | Labaree |
| SIGNATURE | LABAREE D F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3416-3831 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Backtalk: Americans are overschooled
School takes up a large part of people’s lives. David F. Labaree argues that it’s too much. Young people have little unstructured time to learn on their own, without close adult supervision. In addition, the skills required for success in school, such as compliance and avoiding risk, can limit students’ ability to innovate in the future
Critical issues in democratic schooling: Curriculum, teaching, and Socio-Political realities
"Critical issues in democratic schooling: Curriculum, teaching, and Socio-Political realities." Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
The fraught connection between state and school
Public schooling in the 19th century cultivated in students a shared sense of identity as citizens with a common culture. However, posits David Labaree, U.S. schools are less effective than they used to be at serving this purpose, making their value to the nation-state open to questioning. Labaree considers three common functions that public schools serve for the state — legitimacy, economic productivity, and civic community — and questions how w…
Bookshelf: Kappan authors on their favorite reads
In this monthly Kappan column, authors recommend books that have influenced and inspired them in their education careers. This month, David Labaree recommends Confessions of a School Reformer by Larry Cuban, and Nina Weisling and Wendy Gardiner recommend The Price of Nice: How Good Intentions Maintain Educational Inequality, edited by Angelina E. Castagno
The dynamic tension at the core of the grammar of schooling
The American system of schooling has been remarkably resistant to change, with most changes coming in the form of tinkering around the edges. Large-scale reform that alters what David Tyack and Larry Cuban (1995) referred to as the “grammar of schooling” has tended to fizzle out. David Labaree suggests that the practices that are most likely to become part of this persistent grammar of schooling, such as the age-graded classroom, are those that a…
Bookshelf: Kappan authors on their favorite reads
In this monthly column, Kappan authors discuss books and articles that have informed their views on education. David Labaree recommends Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. And Laura Bornfreund recommends First Things First: Creating the New American Primary School
Policy Dialogue: The Problems and Promises of Higher Education in the United States
Nearly 70 percent of American students enroll in postsecondary education immediately after graduating high school. Yet college and university completion rates remain highly disparate across social and economic groups. White students in the US are 20 percent more likely than Black and Latino students to graduate, and students from high-income backgrounds are roughly five times more likely to graduate than their lower-income peers. As a result, man…
Two cheers for school bureaucracy
Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But David Labaree makes a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are built within a liberal democratic system, where the liberal pursuit of self-interest is often in tension with the democratic pursuit of egalitarianism. In recent years, Labaree argues, schools have tilted toward…
Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism
Journal Article Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism Get access David F Labaree David F Labaree Correspondence: David F. Labaree, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 54, Issue 3, June 2020, Pages 679–693, https://doi.org/10.1111/…
The Trouble with Ed Schools
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.…
An Affair to Remember: America's Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good
American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little interest in universities and provided little support. The war spurred a large investment in defence-based scientific research in universities, and the emergence of the Cold War expanded federal investment exponentially. Unlike a hot war, the Cold War offe…
Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Comparative Visions
The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the United States
A bstract In this essay, David Labaree examines the paradox of educationalization in the American context. He argues that, like most modern Western societies, the United States has displayed a strong tendency over the years for educationalizing social problems, even though schools have repeatedly proven that they are an ineffective mechanism for solving these problems. He starts by examining the ways in which the process of educationalizing socia…
Mutual Subversion: A Short History of the Liberal and the Professional in American Higher Education
I want to tell a story about American higher education. Like many historical accounts, this story has a contrapuntal quality. As we know, historians frequently find themselves trying to weave discordant themes into complex patterns in the hope of making harmony. The reason for this is that simple themes are hard to find in the account of any complex social institution, especially one like education, which is composed of a motley accumulation of h…
Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance
This paper tells a story about progressivism, schools and schools of education in twentieth‐century America. Depending on one's position in the politics of education, this story can assume the form of a tragedy or a romance, or perhaps even a comedy. The heart of the tale is the struggle for control of American education in the early twentieth century between two factions of the movement for progressive education. The administrative progressives …
Life on the Margins
One puzzle about the politics of teacher education in the United States is that teacher educators exert so little influence in this arena. (1) On the face of it, you would think that we would take a leading role in setting policy for teacher education and informing the public alike about the issues in this field. After all, we are the ones who run the programs that prepare teachers and who carry out the research that informs these programs. But t…
The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers
In this article, some difficulties are examined involving turning educational practitioners into educational researchers at American education schools. Teachers bring many traits that are ideal for this new role. At the same time, students and professors in researcher training programs often encounter a cultural clash between the world-views of the teacher and researcher. Students may feel they are being asked to transform their cultural orientat…
On the Nature of Teaching and Teacher Education: Difficult Practices that Look Easy
The effort over the past 150 years to create an effective and respected system for preparing teachers in the United States has not been easy. A large body of research on the history of teacher-education reform is a tale of persistent mediocrity and resistance to change. The author's aim in this article is not to revisit this sad story, but to examine an old and enduring problem that has long blocked the path to a truly professional education for …
How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education
How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education
Journal Article How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education. By David F. Labaree. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. x, 323 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-300-06993-6.) Get access Jürgen Herbst Jürgen Herbst Durango, Colorado Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 85, Issue 3, December 1998, Page 1150, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567348 P…
Educational Researchers: Living With a Lesser Form of Knowledge
In this article, I argue that key characteristics of educational knowledge both constrain and enable the work of educational researchers, as producers of this knowledge, in distinctive ways. Educational knowledge is soft (vs. hard), applied (vs. Pure), and provides use value (vs. exchange value). As a result, knowledge production in education is organized in a manner that is structurally egalitarian and substantively divergent. Some consequences …
Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals
This article explores three alternative goals for American education that have been at the root of educational conflicts over the years: democratic equality (schools should focus on preparing citizens), social efficiency (they should focus on training workers), and social mobility (they should prepare individuals to compete for social positions). These goals represent, respectively, the educational perspective of the citizen, the taxpayer, and th…
Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
Research news and Comment: Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
The City and Education in Four Nations
Introduction Problematics and domains: thinking internationally about urban education Ronald K. Goodenow Part I. Research in National Contexts: 1. History, education and the city: a review of trends in Britain David A. Reeder 2. Education and America's cities Ronald D. Cohen and William J. Reese 3. The 'state' of the history of urban education in Australia Kerry Wimshurst and Ian Davey 4. Out of the shadow: retrieving the history of urban educati…
The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers
In this article, some difficulties are examined involving turning educational practitioners into educational researchers at American education schools. Teachers bring many traits that are ideal for this new role. At the same time, students and professors in researcher training programs often encounter a cultural clash between the world-views of the teacher and researcher. Students may feel they are being asked to transform their cultural orientat…
Progressivism, schools and schools of education: An American romance
This paper tells a story about progressivism, schools and schools of education in twentieth‐century America. Depending on one's position in the politics of education, this story can assume the form of a tragedy or a romance, or perhaps even a comedy. The heart of the tale is the struggle for control of American education in the early twentieth century between two factions of the movement for progressive education. The administrative progressives …
On the Nature of Teaching and Teacher Education: Difficult Practices that Look Easy
The effort over the past 150 years to create an effective and respected system for preparing teachers in the United States has not been easy. A large body of research on the history of teacher-education reform is a tale of persistent mediocrity and resistance to change. The author's aim in this article is not to revisit this sad story, but to examine an old and enduring problem that has long blocked the path to a truly professional education for …
Educational Researchers: Living With a Lesser Form of Knowledge
In this article, I argue that key characteristics of educational knowledge both constrain and enable the work of educational researchers, as producers of this knowledge, in distinctive ways. Educational knowledge is soft (vs. hard), applied (vs. Pure), and provides use value (vs. exchange value). As a result, knowledge production in education is organized in a manner that is structurally egalitarian and substantively divergent. Some consequences …
The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939
This prize-winning book analyzes the origins and development of the first public high school in Philadelphia, which became a model for secondary schools elsewhere. Using Central High School as a case study, Labaree argues that the American public high school is the product of the struggle between egalitarianism and meritocracy that is endemic to a democratic society. Winner of the History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award and co-winne…
Life on the Margins
One puzzle about the politics of teacher education in the United States is that teacher educators exert so little influence in this arena. (1) On the face of it, you would think that we would take a leading role in setting policy for teacher education and informing the public alike about the issues in this field. After all, we are the ones who run the programs that prepare teachers and who carry out the research that informs these programs. But t…
Mutual Subversion: A Short History of the Liberal and the Professional in American Higher Education
I want to tell a story about American higher education. Like many historical accounts, this story has a contrapuntal quality. As we know, historians frequently find themselves trying to weave discordant themes into complex patterns in the hope of making harmony. The reason for this is that simple themes are hard to find in the account of any complex social institution, especially one like education, which is composed of a motley accumulation of h…
Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb
Introduction 1. Farm village to commuter suburb 2. The evolution of educational leadership 3. The free high school 4. The rise of Yankee city and the prolongation of schooling 5. Popularising high school: 'the college of the people' 6. The origins of high school youth culture 7. Educational opportunity and social mobility 8. The birth of progressive reform and the junior high school Conclusion Appendices Notes Index
Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
Research news and Comment: Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
The City and Education in Four Nations
Introduction Problematics and domains: thinking internationally about urban education Ronald K. Goodenow Part I. Research in National Contexts: 1. History, education and the city: a review of trends in Britain David A. Reeder 2. Education and America's cities Ronald D. Cohen and William J. Reese 3. The 'state' of the history of urban education in Australia Kerry Wimshurst and Ian Davey 4. Out of the shadow: retrieving the history of urban educati…
The State and the Non-Public School, 1825-1925
The State and the Non-Public School, 1823–1925. By Lloyd P. Jorgenson. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. xi + 235 pp. $29.00.) David Labaree David Labaree Michigan State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 2, September 1988, Page 613, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887915 Published: 01 September 1988
Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism
Journal Article Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism Get access David F Labaree David F Labaree Correspondence: David F. Labaree, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 54, Issue 3, June 2020, Pages 679–693, https://doi.org/10.1111/…
An Affair to Remember: America's Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good
American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little interest in universities and provided little support. The war spurred a large investment in defence-based scientific research in universities, and the emergence of the Cold War expanded federal investment exponentially. Unlike a hot war, the Cold War offe…
Does the Subject Matter? Dewey, Democracy, and the History of Curriculum
Curriculum, Credentials, and the Middle Class: A Case Study of a Nineteenth Century High School
This historical case study of a prominent nineteenth-century high school analyzes one example of the development of the hegemonic curriculum. This developmental process hinged on the complex relationship between the high school and its middle-class constituency, a relationship that was mediated by the market in educational credentials. Shaped by bourgeois ideological principles (merit, self-discipline, and utility), the curriculum of the mid-1800…
The School/Work Nexus: Transition of Youth from School to Work
Education as History: Interpreting Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Education
Academic Excellence in an Early U. S. High School
Journal Article Academic Excellence in an Early U.S. High School Get access David F. Labaree David F. Labaree Georgetown University Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20057. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 31, Issue 5, 1 June 1984, Pages 558–567, https://doi.org/10.2307/800241 Published: 01 August 2014
The Politics of School Reform, 1870-1940
Parens Patriae: The Private Roots of Public Policy toward Children
Curriculum, Credentials, and the Middle Class: A Case Study of a Nineteenth Century High School
This historical case study of a prominent nineteenth-century high school analyzes one example of the development of the hegemonic curriculum. This developmental process hinged on the complex relationship between the high school and its middle-class constituency, a relationship that was mediated by the market in educational credentials. Shaped by bourgeois ideological principles (merit, self-discipline, and utility), the curriculum of the mid-1800…
The State and the Non-Public School, 1825-1925
The State and the Non-Public School, 1823–1925. By Lloyd P. Jorgenson. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. xi + 235 pp. $29.00.) David Labaree David Labaree Michigan State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 2, September 1988, Page 613, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887915 Published: 01 September 1988
Avenues to Adulthood: The Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb
Introduction 1. Farm village to commuter suburb 2. The evolution of educational leadership 3. The free high school 4. The rise of Yankee city and the prolongation of schooling 5. Popularising high school: 'the college of the people' 6. The origins of high school youth culture 7. Educational opportunity and social mobility 8. The birth of progressive reform and the junior high school Conclusion Appendices Notes Index
Learning to Earn: School, Work, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880-1930
Bowles and Gintis Revisited: Correspondence and Contradition in Educational Theory
Private Philanthropy and Public Education: Pierre S. du Pont and the Delaware Schools, 1890-1940
Journal Article Private Philanthropy and Public Education: Pierre S. du Pont and the Delaware Schools, 1890–1940. By Robert J. Taggart. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988. 257 pp. $34.50.) Get access David F. Labaree David F. Labaree Michigan State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 1, June 1989, Pages 275–276, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908431 P…
The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939
Journal Article The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939. By David F. Labaree. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. xiv + 208 pp. $30.00.) Get access V. P. Franklin V. P. Franklin Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 1, June 1989, Pages 258–259, https://doi.org/1…
The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939
This prize-winning book analyzes the origins and development of the first public high school in Philadelphia, which became a model for secondary schools elsewhere. Using Central High School as a case study, Labaree argues that the American public high school is the product of the struggle between egalitarianism and meritocracy that is endemic to a democratic society. Winner of the History of Education Society's Outstanding Book Award and co-winne…
A kinder and gentler report: Turning Points and the Carnegie tradition
This paper is an effort to locate the latest Carnegie report, Turning Points, within the historical tradition of Carnegie initiatives to shape American educational policy in the twentieth century. Carnegie reports have long expressed an educational vision in which US schools act as a socially efficient mechanism for sorting and socializing students for future positions in the existing social and economic structure. They have pursued this goal by …
The Making of an American High School: The Credentionals Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838-1939
Does the Subject Matter? Dewey, Democracy, and the History of Curriculum
Power, Knowledge, and the Rationalization of Teaching: A Genealogy of the Movement to Professionalize Teaching
In this article, David Labaree presents a genealogy of the current movement to professionalize teaching, focusing on two key factors that define the lineage of this movement and shape its present character and direction. First, he argues that teacher professionalization is an extension of the effort by teacher educators to raise their own professional status. Second,he examines the closely related effort by this same group to develop a science of…
To the Editor
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The City and Education in Four Nations
Introduction Problematics and domains: thinking internationally about urban education Ronald K. Goodenow Part I. Research in National Contexts: 1. History, education and the city: a review of trends in Britain David A. Reeder 2. Education and America's cities Ronald D. Cohen and William J. Reese 3. The 'state' of the history of urban education in Australia Kerry Wimshurst and Ian Davey 4. Out of the shadow: retrieving the history of urban educati…
Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
Research news and Comment: Dire Straits: The Narrow Vision of the Holmes Group
Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals
This article explores three alternative goals for American education that have been at the root of educational conflicts over the years: democratic equality (schools should focus on preparing citizens), social efficiency (they should focus on training workers), and social mobility (they should prepare individuals to compete for social positions). These goals represent, respectively, the educational perspective of the citizen, the taxpayer, and th…
How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education
How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education
Journal Article How to Succeed in School without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education. By David F. Labaree. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. x, 323 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-300-06993-6.) Get access Jürgen Herbst Jürgen Herbst Durango, Colorado Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 85, Issue 3, December 1998, Page 1150, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567348 P…
Educational Researchers: Living With a Lesser Form of Knowledge
In this article, I argue that key characteristics of educational knowledge both constrain and enable the work of educational researchers, as producers of this knowledge, in distinctive ways. Educational knowledge is soft (vs. hard), applied (vs. Pure), and provides use value (vs. exchange value). As a result, knowledge production in education is organized in a manner that is structurally egalitarian and substantively divergent. Some consequences …
Sociology (33 works) · Political science (30 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Pedagogy (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms (14 works) · Mathematics education (14 works) · Politics (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Law (10 works)