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Category: History Lesson

The Curiosity of School

One book that got a little bit of attention, and a lot of Indigo/Chapters shelf space,  over the Christmas period was a little tome called The Curiosity of School, by Ontario freelance writer, Xander Sherman.  While the book does contain the occasional nugget (the bits on testing are kind of fun), it remains unquestionably the worst book I’ve ever read on education! The basic thesis here – from the home-schooled Sherman – is that School gets in the way of real education, and is

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January 11, 2013 2 Comments

Christmas Books

Holiday time means that you’re probably looking for gifts.  If you’re in the market for books related to higher education, I’ve got two recommendations for you. The first is, The University: An Illustrated History.   It’s a coffee-table book, too unwieldy even for reading in bed, let alone on an airplane.  But who cares?  It’s as good a single-volume history of higher learning as has ever been written; it’s admirably global in scope, and it does a very nice job of balancing the institution’s

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December 14, 2012 No Comments

Reforming J-Schools

I see that a number of foundations – including the Knight, McCormick and Scripps-Howard Foundation– have written an open letter  to American university presidents, urging that they make Journalism schools “more like medical schools” and teaching them through immersion in “clinical, hands-on, real-life experience”. From a historical perspective, this is a deeply weird development. Foundations have played a significant role in changing the course of professional education on a couple of occasions. In 1910, the American Medical Association and the

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October 31, 2012 2 Comments

Basic Research Turns 67

Here’s an interesting little nugget: “basic research,” like the atomic bomb, was born in July 1945. The term did not exist until coined by Vannevar Bush for his work Science: the Endless Frontier, a roadmap for post-war American science policy commissioned by President Roosevelt. Prior to WWII, no distinction was made between “basic” and “applied” science; although some sciences were obviously more theoretical than others, it was widely recognized that science was always “applied,” at least to some degree. After

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August 13, 2012 2 Comments

A Back-to-Basics Tuition Policy

Whenever I hear people whine about some allegedly soul-destroying atrocity in the academy and wondering what happened to the “heart” of the university and its ancient ideals, I always smile. I for one would totally be up for a return to the 18th-century university. Starting with pricing policies. Back in the day, the administrative purpose of universities as corporate entities was mainly one of certification: masters would sit together and decide which students were worthy of degrees. The bureaucratization of

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March 9, 2012 No Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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