After my recently published article, “Teach for America: The Hidden Curriculum of Liberal Do-Gooders,” went semi-viral, thanks in no small part to Valerie Strauss, who republished it in its entirety at her Washington Post education blog, I received quite a bit of interesting feedback from readers. Some of it was negative (coming mostly from TFA [...]
The job of the American public school teacher has never been so thankless. In states across America, cutting teacher salaries and pensions has become the most popular method for fixing budget deficits. New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie’s deep cuts, for instance, force teachers to contribute a much higher percentage of their salaries to their [...]
I just finished reading a book for review, Michelle Ann Abate’s Raising Your Kids Right: Children’s Literature and American Political Conservatism (which I wrote about, in relation to the study of children’s literature, here). In Abate’s conclusion, she ponders the future of the conservative movement in relation to the grassroots enthusiasm generated by John McCain’s choice [...]
Since I’m new to this blog, I thought I would introduce myself to readers by pointing to my regular blog, U.S. Intellectual History, which won the 2010 Cliopatria Award for “best group blog.” We are an academic blog but we feature plenty of political content. Here is a small sample of the work we do: [...]
Readers of this blog don’t need convincing that the current political landscape is bleak. Faced with a choice between centrist austerity-mongers led by chief austerity-monger Obama, and nihilistic anti-government Ayn Randians that go by the name of Tea Partiers, it’s no wonder that leftist intellectuals are reduced to compelling if pointless banter about what motivates [...]
The July 2011 edition of the Journal of American History includes David Hollinger’s article, based on his Presidential Address, “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity.” In it, Hollinger describes the social thought of those mid-century Protestants, whom he calls “ecumenical Protestants,” who quit thinking in particularistic Christian and American terms [...]
Andrew Hartman teaches history at Illinois State University. He is the author of Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School.
