Can reformers control their own reforms?
My guest today is cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” By Daniel Willingham The best books show you a new way of thinking about a familiar issue. Paul Peterson’s “Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning”, offers a new way of thinking about education reform by recounting the histories of reformers. The book tells the story of six great figures: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Al Shanker, William Bennett, James Coleman, and one perhaps-great-figure-to-be, Julie Young, President and CEO of Florida Virtual School. A diverse group, to be sure, but Peterson makes a persuasive case that more than just the “reformer” label binds them. (Indeed, King and Coleman are not typically thought of as reformers anyway.) Although they struggled for different goals, a thread of continuity runs through their histories: that of increased centralization of education. From the b
