Experimentalism and education

The records of the New York City Police Department and the New York State Department of Correction would show that my career of crime began at fifteen when I was committed to the Elmira Reformatory for robbing a Tenth Avenue grocery store. These records are slightly inaccurate. My underworld career really began four years earlier, at the tender age of eleven, when I “turned off” a Ninth Avenue cigar store for a load of cigarettes and candy and an armful of Nick Carter and Old Sleuth magazines. I have indelible memories of that blood-and-thunder fiction which furnished me with patterns for my adolescent exploits. Moreover, it convinced me that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were sissies compared to Jesse James, “High Card Mike,” and the Younger Brothers. Safe cracking and train robbery, it also convinced me, was a better racket than statesmanship.     

Choosing teaching as a career in urban public Catholic and Jewish schools by graduates of elite colleges

Recruitment, preparation, and retention of graduates of elite colleges is considered an innovative approach to improve teacher quality and promote change in the neediest schools. While the debate over the effectiveness of such programs is heavily focused on programs like Teach For America, this paper considers three teacher preparation programs located at elite colleges that combine alternative and traditional teacher preparation. This article argues that teachers who were trained at elite colleges and who chose teaching in urban public, urban Catholic, and Jewish schools tend to (a) conceptualize teaching around broad issues related to social justice, educational change, and community revitalization, arguing they joined teaching to improve society, and (b) seek leadership positions in their respective school sectors. These findings carry substantial policy implications in the areas of teacher recruitment, preparation, retention, and teacher quality.     

The university system in Spain: An analysis of structure

While tradition is the basic factor that keeps the Spanish university system tied to rigid and outmoded academic programs, a second important factor is the vested interest of the senior faculty. University faculty attain their full professorship through an archaic open competition which has endowed the position with high social and political prestige and with the opportunity of earning a high income from consulting outside the university. Within the university the full professor is a government bureaucrat with life-time tenure, and all the lower ranked professors within his field of specialty work for him. With only minor success university students are rebelling against this archaic system in an effort to liberalize and modernize the academic programs. Even the Ministry of Education has avoided a frontal attack against the system. The government is establishing new autonomous universities, with flexible and modern academic programs, and an administration similar to that found in most American universities.