This post is a piece by an undergrad at Claremont about how unnecessary complexity undercuts the effectiveness and reach of academic writing. It was published in The Student Life. Here's a link to the original. All I can add is: Amen. Unnecessary complexity is ruining academic writing; it’s up to us to save it By … Continue reading Ryan Lillestrand — Unnecessary Complexity is Ruining Academic Writing
This post is a piece I wrote for the 1989 book, American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, edited by Don Warren. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. A slightly different version appeared as a chapter in my 1997 book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. I agreed to … Continue reading Career Ladders and the Early School Teacher: A Study on Inequality and Opportunity
This post is a review essay by Simon Blackburn, published in 2011 in The New Republic. Its focus is the lovely book by Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. Here's a link to the original. I used this book in a long-time course I taught about academic writing. (You can … Continue reading Simon Blackburn — The Mighty Pen
For anyone who’s interested, today I’m posting below an updated list of all my publications and courses syllabi, including links to these works and to full course materials. Here's a link to the Word document version, which is more useful. David F. Labaree Links to Publications and Course Materials December 14, 2021 Lee L. Jacks … Continue reading Links to All My Publications and Course Materials — an Updated List
Last week I posted Paul Fussell's essay about his experience as a Second World War platoon leader in the brutal final days of the European campaign. Today I'm posting excerpts from his stunning book, Wartime. The essay focused on his personal experience in the war, but this one focuses on the broader impact the war … Continue reading Paul Fussell on the Myth of the Good War
This post is a piece I published in 2020 in the Chronicle Review. It’s about an issue that has been gnawing at me for years. How can you justify the existence of institutions of the sort I taught at for the last two decades — rich private research universities? These institutions obviously benefit their students and … Continue reading How NOT to Defend the Private Research University
This piece originally appeared in Harpers in 1982. Here's a link to the original. The 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Tuesday set off yet another round of reminiscences about World War II -- the Good War fought for Righteous Principles by the Greatest Generation. As someone who managed to escape being drafted into the … Continue reading Paul Fussell — My War
on Getting It Wrong — Rethinking a Life in ScholarThis post is an overview of my life as a scholar. I presented an oral version in my job talk at Stanford in 2002. The idea was to make sense of the path I’d taken in my scholarly writing up to that point. What were the … Continue reading Getting It Wrong — Rethinking a Life in Scholarship
This post is a collection of tips about good writing that I have used in classes over the years. I hope you find them useful. Academic Writing Is a Process of Entering an Ongoing Conversation So you don’t just jump in, you try to situate your argument in the larger conversational arena. Orienting the reader … Continue reading Writing Tips
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 