Daedalus articles from September 1998

Daedalus archives from September 1998

Some features of a flawed educational system.
September 22, 1998... I assume, perhaps wrongly, that most readers of Daedalus have had no meaningful relationship to schools apart from their own early schooling and occasional contact for their children. Candor requires that I say I have learned not to discuss...

"A light feeling of chaos": educational reform and policy in the United States.
September 22, 1998... For most of this century schooling was fiscally and politically a local issue, and educational reform was emphasized in neither national nor state policy. In the 1950s, the launching of the Soviet Sputnik satellite caused a brief flurry of...

Expectations, incentives, and performance in America's schools.
September 22, 1998... THE SETTING Imagine a going concern for which the ultimate purpose is both unclear and contested, the connection between inputs and outputs is difficult to identify, there is controversy about what precisely constitutes the inputs and the...

A generation in crisis?
September 22, 1998... Endlessly criticized as imprecise, educators in recent years have gathered reams of statistics and dozens of "indicators" of "the condition of education."(1) The numbers come from state and federal agencies, and their aggregate impact reaches...

Learning organizations for sustainable education reform.
September 22, 1998... The most striking feature of the education-reform movement in America today is that it is still with us. During the twentieth century, the country has seen many education-reform efforts come and go with disappointing results. Usually, proposals...

Transformative learning from experience in the knowledge era.
September 22, 1998... "The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning." - Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker Thinking for a Living(1) Adults are facing unprecedented challenges in almost every sphere of life, and the consequences for learning...

Living but not dying by the market: recent changes in health care.
September 22, 1998... The health-care industry, long dominated by its suppliers, has changed in the past decade as a result of demand exerted by business and government purchasers. Because of this demand, health-care markets have become more competitive, enabling...

Modernizing agriculture: a continuing process.
September 22, 1998... Agriculture in the United States has undergone dramatic technological and social-economic structural change during the past century. Theodore W. Schultz was the first to emphasize the role of science-based technological change as a key force for...

The politics of innovation. (communication systems)
September 22, 1998... This essay provides a historical perspective on the process of innovation in American communications. It is drawn from a larger, ongoing study of communications policy in the post-office department, Western Union, and the Bell System in the...

Designing, developing, and reforming systems.
September 22, 1998... The american public and professionals in education voice considerable concern about the state of the precollege school system in the country today. Society is far less critical of the country's telephone, computer, and electrical power systems,...

Applied research and development: support for continuing improvement in education.
September 22, 1998... I shall take it as self-evident that each generation must define afresh the nature, direction, and aims of education to assure such freedom and rationality as can be attained for a future generation. For there are changes both in circumstances...