In recent years, federal mandates in education have become the subject of increasing debate. Adam R. Nelson's "The Elusive Ideal" a postwar history of federal involvement in the Boston public schools provides lessons from the past that shed light on the continuing struggles of urban public schools today. This far-reaching analysis examines the persistent failure of educational policy at local, state, and federal levels to equalize educational opportunity for all. Exploring deep-seated tensions between the educational ideals of integration, inclusion, and academic achievement over time, Nelson...

This text is a biography of Alexander Meiklejohn, one of the most important and controversial educators and civil libertarians of the 20th century. The book follows Meiklejohn's life from his birth to working class immigrant parents, to his position as delegate to UNESCO after World War II.

A biography of the charismatic Alexander Meiklejohn that tracks his turbulent career as an educational innovator at Brown University, Amherst College, and the University of Wisconsin's 'Experimental College' in the early twentieth century. It also features his later work as a civil libertarian in the Joe McCarthy era.

Vividly revealing the multiple layers on which print has been produced, consumed, regulated, and contested for the purpose of education since the mid-nineteenth century, the historical case studies in Education and the Culture of Print in Modern America deploy a view of education that extends far beyond the confines of traditional classrooms. The nine essays examine how print educates in settings as diverse as depression-era work camps, religious training, and broadcast television all the while revealing the enduring tensions that exist among the controlling interests of print...

Engages a topic of pressing concern for government, business, and education leaders around the world: the race to establish 'world-class' universities. Some herald the globalization of higher education as the key to a dynamic and productive 'knowledge society.' Others worry that modern universities have come to resemble multinational corporations.

Engages a topic of pressing concern for government, business, and education leaders around the world: the race to establish 'world-class' universities. Some herald the globalization of higher education as the key to a dynamic and productive 'knowledge society.' Others worry that modern universities have come to resemble multinational corporations.

The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but...