Education
Got Shakespeare?
When conservatives declare the death of the English major, they highlight the need for the critical thinking skills that English departments excel at teaching.
What White Kids Learn About Race in School
Sixty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education, U.S. schools remain largely segregated.
Everyday Economists
The postwar generation understood why a prosperous working class is crucial to the economy. Can economics be accessible again to ordinary Americans?
Teachers with Guns
What happens when a school district votes to arm teachers? A Rust Belt educator on the grim realities of training to kill one of his own students.
Teaching Citizenship
Education’s most important job is to teach students to take an active role in their democracy, starting in their own communities.
Why Do We Pledge Allegiance?
Few democracies require children to make a daily declaration of fealty to country.
The Slow and Fast Assault on Public Education
Striking teachers and student activists have a common enemy.
We Don’t Need No Education?
A controversial new book highlights the dire straits of the U.S. education system, but offers misguided and irresponsible ideas for fixing it.
The Erotics of Mentorship
The best teaching is always intimate. Today’s universities make it difficult to talk about that.
The GOP Plan to Turn Students into Trump Voters
By attacking higher education, the new tax bill belies the GOP’s ambitious political motivations.
Good Reader, Bad Reader
Bad readers were not born; they were created. To know them is to understand literature and politics in postwar America.
A Brown v. Board for Higher Ed
When college is a prerequisite for getting a job that pays better than minimum wage, we cannot stop until it is free and accessible to all.
It’s The Gap, Stupid
Three books draw a disturbing picture of America as a system of compounding inequality driven by a hereditary meritocracy of professional elites.
When Politics Drives Scholarship
Nancy MacLean’s new book has set off a heated debate. But strong claims require strong evidence, and mistakes could mislead liberals and the left.
The Book that Explains Charlottesville
The University of Virginia has long been a bastion of white supremacy and white supremacy–validating scholarship.
Kochonomics: The Racist Roots of Public Choice Theory
A controversial new book traces how the anti-democratic projects of the Jim Crow South evolved into an economic theory still championed by the GOP today.
Silicon Valley to Liberal Arts Majors: We Want You
Tech billionaires love to declare the death of liberal arts, but could they instead be the future of Silicon Valley?
The Dream Hoarders
Focusing on the top 1 percent is a mistake. The real class divide is between the upper middle class—the top 20 percent—and the rest of America.
Scholars in Exile
Refugee scholars in Europe face tremendous obstacles. Now some universities are trying to change that.
Get our newsletter
Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975
Registered 501(c)(3) organization
Help Us Stay Paywall-Free
Become a Member