Although the culture wars have preoccupied the nation for the past two decades, these impassioned debates about the function of education have produced few lasting institutional changes. The author of this volume shows why the system of higher education has been particularly resistant to reform. Unravelling stereotypes about conservative, liberal and radical reform efforts, Miller looks at what has actually happened when theories about education have been put into practice. What did Matthew Arnold do as a school inspector to promote the study of "the best that has been thought and said in our time"? Why did the Great Books programme fail at the University of Chicago and succeed at a small liberal arts college in Annapolis, Maryland? How did Tony Bennett and others involved in the radical work of British Cultural Studies test their students' knowledge of popular culture? How did ethnographers of schooling respond when they encountered students with apparently racist attitudes?
By raising such questions, the book seeks to focus attention on how students, teachers and administrators experience life in the academy as they negotiate the daily realities of reading lists, writing assignments, grading practices and funding crises. By juxtaposing what educators think about social change with what these same people actually do in the classroom, Miller intends to identify ways to generate locally effective reform objectives for the university as it retools for the information age.
- ISBN10 0801434831
- ISBN13 9780801434839
- Publish Date 1 May 1998
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 9 January 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Cornell University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 249
- Language English