My new blog post is an essay I wrote recently and tried to publish in several different venues, without success.  So I'm publishing it here on my blog, where editorial standards are a bit more flexible. After spending many years decrying the rampant credentialism in the modern structure of schooling, I'm beginning to think about its possible upsides.  Yes, it undercuts academic learning by focusing instead on the accumulation of grades, credits, and degrees, and it also subverts meritocracy by rewarding form over content. But consider some of the benefits of credentialism both for students and for society.  It helps students gain a degree of autonomy within the prison-like confines of the hyper-controlling system of schooling that they must endure for so many years of their lives.   And it also benefits society, by encouraging students to exercise creativity, develop initiative, and learn how to operate independently within a rule-bound organization without directly challenging its norms.  Credentialism offers both a jail break and a course in entrepreneurship. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is an essay I wrote recently and tried to publish in several different venues, without success.  So I'm publishing it here on my blog, where editorial standards are a bit more flexible. After spending many years decrying the rampant credentialism in the modern structure of schooling, I'm beginning to think about its possible upsides.  Yes, it undercuts academic learning by focusing instead on the accumulation of grades, credits, and degrees, and it also subverts meritocracy by rewarding form over content. But consider some of the benefits of credentialism both for students and for society.  It helps students gain a degree of autonomy within the prison-like confines of the hyper-controlling system of schooling that they must endure for so many years of their lives.   And it also benefits society, by encouraging students to exercise creativity, develop initiative, and learn how to operate independently within a rule-bound organization without directly challenging its norms.  Credentialism offers both a jail break and a course in entrepreneurship. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is an essay about the formation of the US common school system, which was responsible for helping to establish the American republic during a period in the early 19th century when its survival was in doubt.  The essay is an extended excerpt from the second chapter of my book, Someone Has to Fail. I'm posting it here for two reasons.  First, the common schools saved the republic during a time of dire threat.  It's a great story of how important schools are to the nation state.  In the 1820s and 30s, the fragile US polity was shaken by the market revolution that would come to destroy the traditional pattern of social, economic, political, and moral life in the country.  Challenges to the survival of a social order don't get any more serious than this. The second reason for this post is that it provides a window into one of my all-time favorite books, Paul Johnson's 1978 classic, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, NY, 1815 to 1837.  Everyone should read this book, which will teach you more about the historical interaction between economy and society than anything else I have encountered. The Rochester case is compelling because the market didn't intrude on the town through a gradual process.  Instead the market arrived on a canal boat one day in 1825, when the Erie Canal reached Rochester.  Suddenly the town was connected through cheap transportation to New York City and the world.  The consequences were traumatic, turning the entire social order upside down.  And, since this was the early 19th century, the community experienced this upheaval as a religious crisis.  One of the great evangelists in US history, Charles Grandison Finney, came to the rescue, launching an enormous religious revival that became the centerpiece of the Second Great Awakening and turned upstate New York into what people came to call the Burned Over District. Drawing on Johnson's analysis, I show how the common school movement was able to take the lead in establishing a model for creating community within the radically individualist setting of a market economy.  Take all of the youths in a community and expose them to a shared educational experience that would provide them with the values and norms and skills required for them to be self-regulating members of the new social order, capable of balancing the self-interested economic behavior of a market actor with the civic virtue of a republican citizen. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is an essay about the formation of the US common school system, which was responsible for helping to establish the American republic during a period in the early 19th century when its survival was in doubt.  The essay is an extended excerpt from the second chapter of my book, Someone Has to Fail. I'm posting it here for two reasons.  First, the common schools saved the republic during a time of dire threat.  It's a great story of how important schools are to the nation state.  In the 1820s and 30s, the fragile US polity was shaken by the market revolution that would come to destroy the traditional pattern of social, economic, political, and moral life in the country.  Challenges to the survival of a social order don't get any more serious than this. The second reason for this post is that it provides a window into one of my all-time favorite books, Paul Johnson's 1978 classic, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, NY, 1815 to 1837.  Everyone should read this book, which will teach you more about the historical interaction between economy and society than anything else I have encountered. The Rochester case is compelling because the market didn't intrude on the town through a gradual process.  Instead the market arrived on a canal boat one day in 1825, when the Erie Canal reached Rochester.  Suddenly the town was connected through cheap transportation to New York City and the world.  The consequences were traumatic, turning the entire social order upside down.  And, since this was the early 19th century, the community experienced this upheaval as a religious crisis.  One of the great evangelists in US history, Charles Grandison Finney, came to the rescue, launching an enormous religious revival that became the centerpiece of the Second Great Awakening and turned upstate New York into what people came to call the Burned Over District. Drawing on Johnson's analysis, I show how the common school movement was able to take the lead in establishing a model for creating community within the radically individualist setting of a market economy.  Take all of the youths in a community and expose them to a shared educational experience that would provide them with the values and norms and skills required for them to be self-regulating members of the new social order, capable of balancing the self-interested economic behavior of a market actor with the civic virtue of a republican citizen. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is about -- of all things -- patriotism, which has picked up a bad reputation lately.  It's associated with jingoism, right wing causes, and efforts to whitewash the bad parts of American history.  Meanwhile wokeness has promoted the view that Americans have nothing to be proud of, since this is a country founded on the principles of racism and settler colonialism. But, as Rich Cohen points out in this essay from the Wall Street Journal, Bill Murray's character in the film Stripes offers us an alternative take on patriotism that is neither triumphalist nor shamefaced.  Here's how Murray puts it: “We’re not Watusi,” Murray tells his fellow grunts in a moment of disunity and crisis. “We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A,’ huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!…But there’s no animal that’s more faithful, that’s more loyal, more lovable than the mutt.” I love this take on patriotism.  Gotta see that movie again. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is about -- of all things -- patriotism, which has picked up a bad reputation lately.  It's associated with jingoism, right wing causes, and efforts to whitewash the bad parts of American history.  Meanwhile wokeness has promoted the view that Americans have nothing to be proud of, since this is a country founded on the principles of racism and settler colonialism. But, as Rich Cohen points out in this essay from the Wall Street Journal, Bill Murray's character in the film Stripes offers us an alternative take on patriotism that is neither triumphalist nor shamefaced.  Here's how Murray puts it: “We’re not Watusi,” Murray tells his fellow grunts in a moment of disunity and crisis. “We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A,’ huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!…But there’s no animal that’s more faithful, that’s more loyal, more lovable than the mutt.” I love this take on patriotism.  Gotta see that movie again. davidlabaree.com

Alpha school critique substack.com/@cantarutti/not…

Trump’s Bubble Is About to Burst nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opini… via @NYTOpinion

My new blog post is an essay about the historical construction of the American meritocracy, which is to say the new American aristocracy based on academic credentials.  An overview of the argument: Modern systems of public schooling have transformed the concept of merit.  The premodern form of this quality was what Joseph Kett calls essential merit.  This represented a person’s public accomplishments, which were seen as a measure of character.  Such merit was hard won through good works and had to be defended vigorously, even if that meant engaging in duels.  The new kind of merit, which arose in the mid nineteenth century after the emergence of universal public schooling in the U.S., was what Kett calls institutional merit.  This you earned by attending school and advancing through the levels of academic attainment.  It became your personal property, which could not be challenged by others and which granted you privileges in accordance with the level of merit you acquired. Here I examine three consequences of this shift from essential to institutional merit in the American setting.  First, this change democratized merit by making it, at least theoretically, accessible to anyone and not just the gentry, who in the premodern period had prime access to this reputational good.  Second, it formalized the idea of merit by turning it from a series of publicly visible and substantive accomplishments into the accumulation of the forms that schooling had to offer – grades, credits, and degrees.  Third, following from the first two, it served the social function of naturalizing the privileges of birth by transposing them into academic accomplishments.  The well born, through the medium of schooling, acquired a second nature that transformed ascribed status into achieved status. davidlabaree.com

My new blog post is an essay about the historical construction of the American meritocracy, which is to say the new American aristocracy based on academic credentials. An overview of the argument: Modern systems of public schooling have transformed the concept of merit.  The premodern form of this quality was what Joseph Kett calls essential merit.  This represented a person’s public accomplishments, which were seen as a measure of character.  Such merit was hard won through good works and had to be defended vigorously, even if that meant engaging in duels.  The new kind of merit, which arose in the mid nineteenth century after the emergence of universal public schooling in the U.S., was what Kett calls institutional merit.  This you earned by attending school and advancing through the levels of academic attainment.  It became your personal property, which could not be challenged by others and which granted you privileges in accordance with the level of merit you acquired. Here I examine three consequences of this shift from essential to institutional merit in the American setting.  First, this change democratized merit by making it, at least theoretically, accessible to anyone and not just the gentry, who in the premodern period had prime access to this reputational good.  Second, it formalized the idea of merit by turning it from a series of publicly visible and substantive accomplishments into the accumulation of the forms that schooling had to offer – grades, credits, and degrees.  Third, following from the first two, it served the social function of naturalizing the privileges of birth by transposing them into academic accomplishments.  The well born, through the medium of schooling, acquired a second nature that transformed ascribed status into achieved status. davidlabaree.com