Tag: Education

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Books

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

– Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny.  The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Lonely Crowd was first published in 1950 as a sociological analysis. The authors trace the development of the new middle class as the character of contemporary society shifts from… More

Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics

– Riesman, David, and Nathan Glazer.  Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies In Character and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
A follow up volume to the sociological studies of The Lonely Crowd, Faces in the Crowd further delves into questions of the individual and character.  The work explores the place of… More

The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College." Commentary, May, 1952.
Excerpt: The uniqueness of America is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the college-educated group, which in most countries of the Western world is the elite, is here a mass.… More

The Nation’s Children Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Nation's Children', Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed." Review of The Nation's Children, by Eli Ginzberg, Commentary, June, 1960.
Excerpt: These thirty-one papers were prepared as background reading for the decennial White House Conference on Children and Youth held late in March in Washington, with a vast attendance… More

Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York Schools?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is 'Integration' Possible in the New York Schools?" Commentary, 1960.
Excerpt: It is now more than six years since “integration” became an issue in the New York City school system; and, very likely, at the start of the new school term some of New… More

What Happened at Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened at Berkeley." Commentary, 1965.
Excerpt: As I write this, in late December, we in Berkeley are in the Christmas lull. The university’s 18,000 undergraduates are for the most part at home, many of the faculty and… More

The New Left and Its Limits

– Glazer, Nathan. "The New Left and Its Limits." Commentary, 1968.
Excerpt: For the last few years I have looked with increasing skepticism on the analyses and the actions of the radical Left in America. By the radical Left I mean those who believe there… More

“Student Power” in Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Student power' in Berkeley." The Public Interest, 1968.
Excerpt: Whatever students may be doing to change the world—and they are clearly doing a good deal—it could turn out that, in the end, it is rather easier to change the world than the… More

110 Livingston Street by David Rogers Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers Reviewed." Review of 110 Livingston Street by David Rogers, Commentary, May, 1969.
Excerpt: One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of… More

Is Busing Necessary?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is Busing Necessary?" Commentary, 1972.
Excerpt: It is the fate of any social reform in the United States—perhaps anywhere—that, instituted by enthusiasts, men of vision, politicians, statesmen, it is soon put into the… More

Ethnicity and the Schools

– Glazer, Nathan. "Ethnicity and The Schools." Commentary, September, 1974.
Excerpt: It is not easy to find the words that would accurately describe the current wave of ethnic feeling which seems now to be sweeping over America. Even the word “wave” may strike… More

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement, by Robert Will Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'; 'Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement', by Robert Will Reviewed." Commentary, October, 1974.  
Excerpt: The main themes of Time on the Cross are already familiar: they have been presented in book reviews, in newspaper reports, in television programs. Fogel and Engerman have… More

Who Wants Higher Education Even When It’s Free?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Who Wants Higher Education Even When It's Free?" The Public Interest, 1975.
Excerpt: For the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The… More

Why Bakke Won’t End Reverse Discrimination: 2

– Glazer, Nathan. "Why Bakke Won't End Reverse Discrimination: 2." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: If the long opinion written by Justice Powell in the Bakke case were truly “the judgment of the Court,” then I believe there would be grounds for satisfaction among those of us… More

The Attack on the Professions

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Attack on the Professions." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: Professionalism, professionalization, and the professions are increasingly central to any grasp of modern societies, yet persistently elude proper understanding. On the one hand,… More

Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?" The Public Interest 56 (1979): 43-65.
Excerpt: The history of the Federal government’s regulation of business is much longer than that of its regulation of the universities and colleges. Until the middle 1960’s or so, its… More

Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks

– Glazer, Nathan and Reed Ueda. Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1983.
By comparing six American history textbooks, Glazer and Ueda find an attempt by the authors to foster understanding and respect toward all ethnic groups.  Yet, they believe U.S. ethnic… More

The affirmative action stalemate

– Glazer, Nathan. "The affirmative action stalemate." The Public Interest 86 (1988): 99-114.
Excerpt: Ten years ago the Supreme Court handed down its first decision on affirmative action. It dealt with the case of an applicant who had been denied admission to a medical school,… More

The real world of urban education

– Glazer, Nathan. "The real world of urban education." The Public Interest 106 (1992): 57-75.
Excerpt: We are now in the eighth year of a fever of concern about the quality of American education that has been unparalleled in the history of the republic. We can date it from the 1983… More

A human capital policy for the cities

– Glazer, Nathan. "A human capital policy for the cities." The Public Interest 112 (1993): 27-49.
Excerpt: A new national administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of… More

Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy

– Glazer, Nathan. "Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy." The Public Interest 120 (1995): 14-40.
Excerpt: Professors Michael Levin and Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York have both been in the news—Professor Jeffries is still in the news—for things they have written… More

We Are All Multiculturalists Now

– Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Glazer explores the changes in American society, arguing that the “melting pot” and assimilation have been discarded in favor of multiculturalism. He highlights what this change means… More

Shame of the Nation: Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "Shame of the Nation." Review of Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol, The New York Times, September 25, 2005.
Excerpt: Jonathan Kozol has been writing books rather similar to this one since “Death at an Early Age” in 1968. He is persistent, it is true, but so is the problem that has… More

What Happened to the Social Agenda?

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened to the Social Agenda?" The American Scholar (2007).
Excerpt: Seven years ago, I was asked to address the 1950 class of the Harvard Graduate School of Design at their 50th reunion in Cambridge. One sentence in the invitation from Robert… More

Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting

– Glazer, Nathan. "Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting." Education Next 7 (2007).
Excerpt: Why We Vote is a provocative interpretation of the factors that determine participation in our democratic processes, and specifically voting, the form of participation available to… More

Inside the Testing Factory

– Glazer, Nathan. "Inside the Testing Factory." Education Next, 2008.
Excerpt: No Child Left Behind, aside from its other effects, has generated a new kind of “successful schools” book, one which looks at schools that have done better than expected on… More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker." Education Next 8 no. 2 (2008).
Excerpt: “Madman or Visionary?” reads the publicity material that accompanies this biography of Albert Shanker. The dust jacket describes the paradigmatic moment in Woody Allen’s 1973… More

Preschool Politics: States’ efforts to reach the very young

– Glazer, Nathan. "Preschool Politics: States' efforts to reach the very young." Education Next 8 no. 3 (2008).
Excerpt: A holiday-themed campaign ad for Hillary Clinton showed the candidate affixing to boxes wrapped in shiny paper gift tags marked with campaign issues, with the final tag marked… More

Purposeful Youth

– Glazer, Nathan. "Purposeful Youth." Education Next, 2009.
Excerpt: William Damon, a distinguished psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, has long been interested, along with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,… More

Examining a Massacre

– Glazer, Nathan. "Examining a Massacre." Review of Columbine by David Cullen, Education Next, Winter 2010.
Excerpt: This book is clearly the last word on Columbine. The author has reported on the Columbine high-school massacre in various magazines and newspapers since 1999; he has interviewed,… More

Equal Knowledge

– Glazer, Nathan. "Equal Knowledge." Review of The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Education Next, Summer 2010.
Excerpt: E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education. It is a simple idea, but has… More

Lessons from a Reformer

– Glazer, Nathan. "Lessons from a Reformer." Review of As Good As It Gets by Larry Cuban, Education Next, Fall 2010.
Excerpt: Larry Cuban is a prolific and insightful chronicler and analyst of our efforts at urban school reform and improvement over the last few decades. In As Good As It Gets he adds the… More

Speech Acts

– Glazer, Nathan. "Speech Acts." Review of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus, The New Republic, December 20, 2010.
Excerpt: Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of… More

E Pluribus Plures

– Glazer, Nathan. "E Pluribus Plures." Review of Patriotic Pluralism by Jeffrey E. Mirel, Education Next, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Americanization, argues education historian Jeffrey Mirel in Patriotic Pluralism, both the process and the term, has been widely misunderstood and too narrowly interpreted in the… More

Whatever Happened to Integration?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Whatever Happened to Integration?" Review of Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Summer 2011.
Excerpt: The two schools referred to in the title of this book are Thomas Jefferson (“Tee-Jay”) High School in Richmond, Virginia, and Freeman High School, in suburban Henrico County.… More

Cautionary Tale

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cautionary Tale." Review of Schoolhouse of Cards by Eugene Hickok and Collision Course by Paul Manna, Education Next, Fall 2011.
Excerpt: Whatever Possessed the President? was the unlikely title of Robert C. Wood’s memoir of urban policy during the 1960s. The same thought springs to mind in reading these two books… More

Green Dot Takeover

– Glazer, Nathan. "Green Dot Takeover." Review of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School by Alexander Russo, Education Next, 2012.
Excerpt: Neither “stray dogs” nor “saints” play any role in Alexander Russo’s account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to… More

Great Teachers in the Classroom?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Great Teachers in the Classroom?" Review of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill, Education Next, Spring 2012.
Excerpt: Steven Brill’s Class Warfare must be the most prominently reviewed book on education in decades: a lengthy front-page review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times Book Review, a… More

Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform

– Glazer, Nathan. "Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform." Review of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political by Robert Maranto and Michael Q. McShane, Education Next, Fall 2012.
Excerpt: This book, and this review, will be published while the presidential campaign is in full swing, and whether there will be anything more to be said about President Obama’s efforts… More

Action Civics

– Glazer, Nathan. "Action Civics." Review of No Citizen Left Behind by Meira Levinson, Education Next, Spring 2013.
Excerpt: Meira Levinson is not your run-of-the-mill or even your teach-for-democracy middle-school teacher. She taught in middle schools with minority and low-income children in Atlanta and… More

To YouTube and Beyond

– Glazer, Nathan. "To YouTube and Beyond." Review of The One World School House by Salman Khan, Education Next, Summer 2013.
Excerpt: We are getting used to explosive growth in the world of the Internet (note Facebook), but Salman Khan’s creation, in a few short years, of Khan Academy, with its potentially… More

Cultural Exchange

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cultural Exchange." Review of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope by Claudia Kolker, Education Next, Fall 2013.
Excerpt: “The Immigration Spring” reads the title of the lead editorial in the New York Times today as I write this review of The Immigrant Advantage. The Times is welcoming a rare case… More

The San Diego Story

– Glazer, Nathan. "The San Diego Story." Review of Tilting at Windmills: School Reform, San Diego, and America’s Race to Renew Public Education by Richard Lee Colvin, Education Next, Winter 2014.
Excerpt: Reading this account of Alan Bersin’s successful, by the test scores, but highly contentious time as school superintendent in San Diego, 1998–2005, I could not help but think… More

Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause

– Glazer, Nathan. "Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause." Review of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, Education Next, Spring 2014.
Excerpt: Endangering Prosperity, with three distinguished authors and an eminent introducer, is devoted to one major point: the United States is truly falling behind not only the East Asian… More

Essays

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

– Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny.  The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Lonely Crowd was first published in 1950 as a sociological analysis. The authors trace the development of the new middle class as the character of contemporary society shifts from… More

Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics

– Riesman, David, and Nathan Glazer.  Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies In Character and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
A follow up volume to the sociological studies of The Lonely Crowd, Faces in the Crowd further delves into questions of the individual and character.  The work explores the place of… More

The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College." Commentary, May, 1952.
Excerpt: The uniqueness of America is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the college-educated group, which in most countries of the Western world is the elite, is here a mass.… More

The Nation’s Children Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Nation's Children', Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed." Review of The Nation's Children, by Eli Ginzberg, Commentary, June, 1960.
Excerpt: These thirty-one papers were prepared as background reading for the decennial White House Conference on Children and Youth held late in March in Washington, with a vast attendance… More

Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York Schools?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is 'Integration' Possible in the New York Schools?" Commentary, 1960.
Excerpt: It is now more than six years since “integration” became an issue in the New York City school system; and, very likely, at the start of the new school term some of New… More

What Happened at Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened at Berkeley." Commentary, 1965.
Excerpt: As I write this, in late December, we in Berkeley are in the Christmas lull. The university’s 18,000 undergraduates are for the most part at home, many of the faculty and… More

The New Left and Its Limits

– Glazer, Nathan. "The New Left and Its Limits." Commentary, 1968.
Excerpt: For the last few years I have looked with increasing skepticism on the analyses and the actions of the radical Left in America. By the radical Left I mean those who believe there… More

“Student Power” in Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Student power' in Berkeley." The Public Interest, 1968.
Excerpt: Whatever students may be doing to change the world—and they are clearly doing a good deal—it could turn out that, in the end, it is rather easier to change the world than the… More

110 Livingston Street by David Rogers Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers Reviewed." Review of 110 Livingston Street by David Rogers, Commentary, May, 1969.
Excerpt: One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of… More

Is Busing Necessary?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is Busing Necessary?" Commentary, 1972.
Excerpt: It is the fate of any social reform in the United States—perhaps anywhere—that, instituted by enthusiasts, men of vision, politicians, statesmen, it is soon put into the… More

Ethnicity and the Schools

– Glazer, Nathan. "Ethnicity and The Schools." Commentary, September, 1974.
Excerpt: It is not easy to find the words that would accurately describe the current wave of ethnic feeling which seems now to be sweeping over America. Even the word “wave” may strike… More

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement, by Robert Will Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'; 'Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement', by Robert Will Reviewed." Commentary, October, 1974.  
Excerpt: The main themes of Time on the Cross are already familiar: they have been presented in book reviews, in newspaper reports, in television programs. Fogel and Engerman have… More

Who Wants Higher Education Even When It’s Free?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Who Wants Higher Education Even When It's Free?" The Public Interest, 1975.
Excerpt: For the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The… More

Why Bakke Won’t End Reverse Discrimination: 2

– Glazer, Nathan. "Why Bakke Won't End Reverse Discrimination: 2." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: If the long opinion written by Justice Powell in the Bakke case were truly “the judgment of the Court,” then I believe there would be grounds for satisfaction among those of us… More

The Attack on the Professions

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Attack on the Professions." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: Professionalism, professionalization, and the professions are increasingly central to any grasp of modern societies, yet persistently elude proper understanding. On the one hand,… More

Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?" The Public Interest 56 (1979): 43-65.
Excerpt: The history of the Federal government’s regulation of business is much longer than that of its regulation of the universities and colleges. Until the middle 1960’s or so, its… More

Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks

– Glazer, Nathan and Reed Ueda. Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1983.
By comparing six American history textbooks, Glazer and Ueda find an attempt by the authors to foster understanding and respect toward all ethnic groups.  Yet, they believe U.S. ethnic… More

The affirmative action stalemate

– Glazer, Nathan. "The affirmative action stalemate." The Public Interest 86 (1988): 99-114.
Excerpt: Ten years ago the Supreme Court handed down its first decision on affirmative action. It dealt with the case of an applicant who had been denied admission to a medical school,… More

The real world of urban education

– Glazer, Nathan. "The real world of urban education." The Public Interest 106 (1992): 57-75.
Excerpt: We are now in the eighth year of a fever of concern about the quality of American education that has been unparalleled in the history of the republic. We can date it from the 1983… More

A human capital policy for the cities

– Glazer, Nathan. "A human capital policy for the cities." The Public Interest 112 (1993): 27-49.
Excerpt: A new national administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of… More

Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy

– Glazer, Nathan. "Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy." The Public Interest 120 (1995): 14-40.
Excerpt: Professors Michael Levin and Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York have both been in the news—Professor Jeffries is still in the news—for things they have written… More

We Are All Multiculturalists Now

– Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Glazer explores the changes in American society, arguing that the “melting pot” and assimilation have been discarded in favor of multiculturalism. He highlights what this change means… More

Shame of the Nation: Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "Shame of the Nation." Review of Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol, The New York Times, September 25, 2005.
Excerpt: Jonathan Kozol has been writing books rather similar to this one since “Death at an Early Age” in 1968. He is persistent, it is true, but so is the problem that has… More

What Happened to the Social Agenda?

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened to the Social Agenda?" The American Scholar (2007).
Excerpt: Seven years ago, I was asked to address the 1950 class of the Harvard Graduate School of Design at their 50th reunion in Cambridge. One sentence in the invitation from Robert… More

Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting

– Glazer, Nathan. "Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting." Education Next 7 (2007).
Excerpt: Why We Vote is a provocative interpretation of the factors that determine participation in our democratic processes, and specifically voting, the form of participation available to… More

Inside the Testing Factory

– Glazer, Nathan. "Inside the Testing Factory." Education Next, 2008.
Excerpt: No Child Left Behind, aside from its other effects, has generated a new kind of “successful schools” book, one which looks at schools that have done better than expected on… More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker." Education Next 8 no. 2 (2008).
Excerpt: “Madman or Visionary?” reads the publicity material that accompanies this biography of Albert Shanker. The dust jacket describes the paradigmatic moment in Woody Allen’s 1973… More

Preschool Politics: States’ efforts to reach the very young

– Glazer, Nathan. "Preschool Politics: States' efforts to reach the very young." Education Next 8 no. 3 (2008).
Excerpt: A holiday-themed campaign ad for Hillary Clinton showed the candidate affixing to boxes wrapped in shiny paper gift tags marked with campaign issues, with the final tag marked… More

Purposeful Youth

– Glazer, Nathan. "Purposeful Youth." Education Next, 2009.
Excerpt: William Damon, a distinguished psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, has long been interested, along with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,… More

Examining a Massacre

– Glazer, Nathan. "Examining a Massacre." Review of Columbine by David Cullen, Education Next, Winter 2010.
Excerpt: This book is clearly the last word on Columbine. The author has reported on the Columbine high-school massacre in various magazines and newspapers since 1999; he has interviewed,… More

Equal Knowledge

– Glazer, Nathan. "Equal Knowledge." Review of The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Education Next, Summer 2010.
Excerpt: E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education. It is a simple idea, but has… More

Lessons from a Reformer

– Glazer, Nathan. "Lessons from a Reformer." Review of As Good As It Gets by Larry Cuban, Education Next, Fall 2010.
Excerpt: Larry Cuban is a prolific and insightful chronicler and analyst of our efforts at urban school reform and improvement over the last few decades. In As Good As It Gets he adds the… More

Speech Acts

– Glazer, Nathan. "Speech Acts." Review of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus, The New Republic, December 20, 2010.
Excerpt: Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of… More

E Pluribus Plures

– Glazer, Nathan. "E Pluribus Plures." Review of Patriotic Pluralism by Jeffrey E. Mirel, Education Next, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Americanization, argues education historian Jeffrey Mirel in Patriotic Pluralism, both the process and the term, has been widely misunderstood and too narrowly interpreted in the… More

Whatever Happened to Integration?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Whatever Happened to Integration?" Review of Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Summer 2011.
Excerpt: The two schools referred to in the title of this book are Thomas Jefferson (“Tee-Jay”) High School in Richmond, Virginia, and Freeman High School, in suburban Henrico County.… More

Cautionary Tale

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cautionary Tale." Review of Schoolhouse of Cards by Eugene Hickok and Collision Course by Paul Manna, Education Next, Fall 2011.
Excerpt: Whatever Possessed the President? was the unlikely title of Robert C. Wood’s memoir of urban policy during the 1960s. The same thought springs to mind in reading these two books… More

Green Dot Takeover

– Glazer, Nathan. "Green Dot Takeover." Review of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School by Alexander Russo, Education Next, 2012.
Excerpt: Neither “stray dogs” nor “saints” play any role in Alexander Russo’s account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to… More

Great Teachers in the Classroom?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Great Teachers in the Classroom?" Review of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill, Education Next, Spring 2012.
Excerpt: Steven Brill’s Class Warfare must be the most prominently reviewed book on education in decades: a lengthy front-page review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times Book Review, a… More

Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform

– Glazer, Nathan. "Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform." Review of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political by Robert Maranto and Michael Q. McShane, Education Next, Fall 2012.
Excerpt: This book, and this review, will be published while the presidential campaign is in full swing, and whether there will be anything more to be said about President Obama’s efforts… More

Action Civics

– Glazer, Nathan. "Action Civics." Review of No Citizen Left Behind by Meira Levinson, Education Next, Spring 2013.
Excerpt: Meira Levinson is not your run-of-the-mill or even your teach-for-democracy middle-school teacher. She taught in middle schools with minority and low-income children in Atlanta and… More

To YouTube and Beyond

– Glazer, Nathan. "To YouTube and Beyond." Review of The One World School House by Salman Khan, Education Next, Summer 2013.
Excerpt: We are getting used to explosive growth in the world of the Internet (note Facebook), but Salman Khan’s creation, in a few short years, of Khan Academy, with its potentially… More

Cultural Exchange

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cultural Exchange." Review of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope by Claudia Kolker, Education Next, Fall 2013.
Excerpt: “The Immigration Spring” reads the title of the lead editorial in the New York Times today as I write this review of The Immigrant Advantage. The Times is welcoming a rare case… More

The San Diego Story

– Glazer, Nathan. "The San Diego Story." Review of Tilting at Windmills: School Reform, San Diego, and America’s Race to Renew Public Education by Richard Lee Colvin, Education Next, Winter 2014.
Excerpt: Reading this account of Alan Bersin’s successful, by the test scores, but highly contentious time as school superintendent in San Diego, 1998–2005, I could not help but think… More

Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause

– Glazer, Nathan. "Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause." Review of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, Education Next, Spring 2014.
Excerpt: Endangering Prosperity, with three distinguished authors and an eminent introducer, is devoted to one major point: the United States is truly falling behind not only the East Asian… More

Commentary

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

– Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny.  The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Lonely Crowd was first published in 1950 as a sociological analysis. The authors trace the development of the new middle class as the character of contemporary society shifts from… More

Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics

– Riesman, David, and Nathan Glazer.  Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies In Character and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
A follow up volume to the sociological studies of The Lonely Crowd, Faces in the Crowd further delves into questions of the individual and character.  The work explores the place of… More

The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College." Commentary, May, 1952.
Excerpt: The uniqueness of America is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the college-educated group, which in most countries of the Western world is the elite, is here a mass.… More

The Nation’s Children Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Nation's Children', Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed." Review of The Nation's Children, by Eli Ginzberg, Commentary, June, 1960.
Excerpt: These thirty-one papers were prepared as background reading for the decennial White House Conference on Children and Youth held late in March in Washington, with a vast attendance… More

Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York Schools?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is 'Integration' Possible in the New York Schools?" Commentary, 1960.
Excerpt: It is now more than six years since “integration” became an issue in the New York City school system; and, very likely, at the start of the new school term some of New… More

What Happened at Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened at Berkeley." Commentary, 1965.
Excerpt: As I write this, in late December, we in Berkeley are in the Christmas lull. The university’s 18,000 undergraduates are for the most part at home, many of the faculty and… More

The New Left and Its Limits

– Glazer, Nathan. "The New Left and Its Limits." Commentary, 1968.
Excerpt: For the last few years I have looked with increasing skepticism on the analyses and the actions of the radical Left in America. By the radical Left I mean those who believe there… More

“Student Power” in Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Student power' in Berkeley." The Public Interest, 1968.
Excerpt: Whatever students may be doing to change the world—and they are clearly doing a good deal—it could turn out that, in the end, it is rather easier to change the world than the… More

110 Livingston Street by David Rogers Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers Reviewed." Review of 110 Livingston Street by David Rogers, Commentary, May, 1969.
Excerpt: One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of… More

Is Busing Necessary?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is Busing Necessary?" Commentary, 1972.
Excerpt: It is the fate of any social reform in the United States—perhaps anywhere—that, instituted by enthusiasts, men of vision, politicians, statesmen, it is soon put into the… More

Ethnicity and the Schools

– Glazer, Nathan. "Ethnicity and The Schools." Commentary, September, 1974.
Excerpt: It is not easy to find the words that would accurately describe the current wave of ethnic feeling which seems now to be sweeping over America. Even the word “wave” may strike… More

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement, by Robert Will Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'; 'Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement', by Robert Will Reviewed." Commentary, October, 1974.  
Excerpt: The main themes of Time on the Cross are already familiar: they have been presented in book reviews, in newspaper reports, in television programs. Fogel and Engerman have… More

Who Wants Higher Education Even When It’s Free?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Who Wants Higher Education Even When It's Free?" The Public Interest, 1975.
Excerpt: For the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The… More

Why Bakke Won’t End Reverse Discrimination: 2

– Glazer, Nathan. "Why Bakke Won't End Reverse Discrimination: 2." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: If the long opinion written by Justice Powell in the Bakke case were truly “the judgment of the Court,” then I believe there would be grounds for satisfaction among those of us… More

The Attack on the Professions

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Attack on the Professions." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: Professionalism, professionalization, and the professions are increasingly central to any grasp of modern societies, yet persistently elude proper understanding. On the one hand,… More

Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?" The Public Interest 56 (1979): 43-65.
Excerpt: The history of the Federal government’s regulation of business is much longer than that of its regulation of the universities and colleges. Until the middle 1960’s or so, its… More

Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks

– Glazer, Nathan and Reed Ueda. Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1983.
By comparing six American history textbooks, Glazer and Ueda find an attempt by the authors to foster understanding and respect toward all ethnic groups.  Yet, they believe U.S. ethnic… More

The affirmative action stalemate

– Glazer, Nathan. "The affirmative action stalemate." The Public Interest 86 (1988): 99-114.
Excerpt: Ten years ago the Supreme Court handed down its first decision on affirmative action. It dealt with the case of an applicant who had been denied admission to a medical school,… More

The real world of urban education

– Glazer, Nathan. "The real world of urban education." The Public Interest 106 (1992): 57-75.
Excerpt: We are now in the eighth year of a fever of concern about the quality of American education that has been unparalleled in the history of the republic. We can date it from the 1983… More

A human capital policy for the cities

– Glazer, Nathan. "A human capital policy for the cities." The Public Interest 112 (1993): 27-49.
Excerpt: A new national administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of… More

Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy

– Glazer, Nathan. "Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy." The Public Interest 120 (1995): 14-40.
Excerpt: Professors Michael Levin and Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York have both been in the news—Professor Jeffries is still in the news—for things they have written… More

We Are All Multiculturalists Now

– Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Glazer explores the changes in American society, arguing that the “melting pot” and assimilation have been discarded in favor of multiculturalism. He highlights what this change means… More

Shame of the Nation: Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "Shame of the Nation." Review of Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol, The New York Times, September 25, 2005.
Excerpt: Jonathan Kozol has been writing books rather similar to this one since “Death at an Early Age” in 1968. He is persistent, it is true, but so is the problem that has… More

What Happened to the Social Agenda?

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened to the Social Agenda?" The American Scholar (2007).
Excerpt: Seven years ago, I was asked to address the 1950 class of the Harvard Graduate School of Design at their 50th reunion in Cambridge. One sentence in the invitation from Robert… More

Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting

– Glazer, Nathan. "Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting." Education Next 7 (2007).
Excerpt: Why We Vote is a provocative interpretation of the factors that determine participation in our democratic processes, and specifically voting, the form of participation available to… More

Inside the Testing Factory

– Glazer, Nathan. "Inside the Testing Factory." Education Next, 2008.
Excerpt: No Child Left Behind, aside from its other effects, has generated a new kind of “successful schools” book, one which looks at schools that have done better than expected on… More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker." Education Next 8 no. 2 (2008).
Excerpt: “Madman or Visionary?” reads the publicity material that accompanies this biography of Albert Shanker. The dust jacket describes the paradigmatic moment in Woody Allen’s 1973… More

Preschool Politics: States’ efforts to reach the very young

– Glazer, Nathan. "Preschool Politics: States' efforts to reach the very young." Education Next 8 no. 3 (2008).
Excerpt: A holiday-themed campaign ad for Hillary Clinton showed the candidate affixing to boxes wrapped in shiny paper gift tags marked with campaign issues, with the final tag marked… More

Purposeful Youth

– Glazer, Nathan. "Purposeful Youth." Education Next, 2009.
Excerpt: William Damon, a distinguished psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, has long been interested, along with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,… More

Examining a Massacre

– Glazer, Nathan. "Examining a Massacre." Review of Columbine by David Cullen, Education Next, Winter 2010.
Excerpt: This book is clearly the last word on Columbine. The author has reported on the Columbine high-school massacre in various magazines and newspapers since 1999; he has interviewed,… More

Equal Knowledge

– Glazer, Nathan. "Equal Knowledge." Review of The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Education Next, Summer 2010.
Excerpt: E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education. It is a simple idea, but has… More

Lessons from a Reformer

– Glazer, Nathan. "Lessons from a Reformer." Review of As Good As It Gets by Larry Cuban, Education Next, Fall 2010.
Excerpt: Larry Cuban is a prolific and insightful chronicler and analyst of our efforts at urban school reform and improvement over the last few decades. In As Good As It Gets he adds the… More

Speech Acts

– Glazer, Nathan. "Speech Acts." Review of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus, The New Republic, December 20, 2010.
Excerpt: Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of… More

E Pluribus Plures

– Glazer, Nathan. "E Pluribus Plures." Review of Patriotic Pluralism by Jeffrey E. Mirel, Education Next, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Americanization, argues education historian Jeffrey Mirel in Patriotic Pluralism, both the process and the term, has been widely misunderstood and too narrowly interpreted in the… More

Whatever Happened to Integration?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Whatever Happened to Integration?" Review of Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Summer 2011.
Excerpt: The two schools referred to in the title of this book are Thomas Jefferson (“Tee-Jay”) High School in Richmond, Virginia, and Freeman High School, in suburban Henrico County.… More

Cautionary Tale

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cautionary Tale." Review of Schoolhouse of Cards by Eugene Hickok and Collision Course by Paul Manna, Education Next, Fall 2011.
Excerpt: Whatever Possessed the President? was the unlikely title of Robert C. Wood’s memoir of urban policy during the 1960s. The same thought springs to mind in reading these two books… More

Green Dot Takeover

– Glazer, Nathan. "Green Dot Takeover." Review of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School by Alexander Russo, Education Next, 2012.
Excerpt: Neither “stray dogs” nor “saints” play any role in Alexander Russo’s account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to… More

Great Teachers in the Classroom?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Great Teachers in the Classroom?" Review of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill, Education Next, Spring 2012.
Excerpt: Steven Brill’s Class Warfare must be the most prominently reviewed book on education in decades: a lengthy front-page review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times Book Review, a… More

Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform

– Glazer, Nathan. "Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform." Review of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political by Robert Maranto and Michael Q. McShane, Education Next, Fall 2012.
Excerpt: This book, and this review, will be published while the presidential campaign is in full swing, and whether there will be anything more to be said about President Obama’s efforts… More

Action Civics

– Glazer, Nathan. "Action Civics." Review of No Citizen Left Behind by Meira Levinson, Education Next, Spring 2013.
Excerpt: Meira Levinson is not your run-of-the-mill or even your teach-for-democracy middle-school teacher. She taught in middle schools with minority and low-income children in Atlanta and… More

To YouTube and Beyond

– Glazer, Nathan. "To YouTube and Beyond." Review of The One World School House by Salman Khan, Education Next, Summer 2013.
Excerpt: We are getting used to explosive growth in the world of the Internet (note Facebook), but Salman Khan’s creation, in a few short years, of Khan Academy, with its potentially… More

Cultural Exchange

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cultural Exchange." Review of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope by Claudia Kolker, Education Next, Fall 2013.
Excerpt: “The Immigration Spring” reads the title of the lead editorial in the New York Times today as I write this review of The Immigrant Advantage. The Times is welcoming a rare case… More

The San Diego Story

– Glazer, Nathan. "The San Diego Story." Review of Tilting at Windmills: School Reform, San Diego, and America’s Race to Renew Public Education by Richard Lee Colvin, Education Next, Winter 2014.
Excerpt: Reading this account of Alan Bersin’s successful, by the test scores, but highly contentious time as school superintendent in San Diego, 1998–2005, I could not help but think… More

Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause

– Glazer, Nathan. "Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause." Review of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, Education Next, Spring 2014.
Excerpt: Endangering Prosperity, with three distinguished authors and an eminent introducer, is devoted to one major point: the United States is truly falling behind not only the East Asian… More

Multimedia

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

– Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny.  The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Lonely Crowd was first published in 1950 as a sociological analysis. The authors trace the development of the new middle class as the character of contemporary society shifts from… More

Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics

– Riesman, David, and Nathan Glazer.  Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies In Character and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
A follow up volume to the sociological studies of The Lonely Crowd, Faces in the Crowd further delves into questions of the individual and character.  The work explores the place of… More

The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College." Commentary, May, 1952.
Excerpt: The uniqueness of America is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the college-educated group, which in most countries of the Western world is the elite, is here a mass.… More

The Nation’s Children Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Nation's Children', Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed." Review of The Nation's Children, by Eli Ginzberg, Commentary, June, 1960.
Excerpt: These thirty-one papers were prepared as background reading for the decennial White House Conference on Children and Youth held late in March in Washington, with a vast attendance… More

Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York Schools?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is 'Integration' Possible in the New York Schools?" Commentary, 1960.
Excerpt: It is now more than six years since “integration” became an issue in the New York City school system; and, very likely, at the start of the new school term some of New… More

What Happened at Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened at Berkeley." Commentary, 1965.
Excerpt: As I write this, in late December, we in Berkeley are in the Christmas lull. The university’s 18,000 undergraduates are for the most part at home, many of the faculty and… More

The New Left and Its Limits

– Glazer, Nathan. "The New Left and Its Limits." Commentary, 1968.
Excerpt: For the last few years I have looked with increasing skepticism on the analyses and the actions of the radical Left in America. By the radical Left I mean those who believe there… More

“Student Power” in Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Student power' in Berkeley." The Public Interest, 1968.
Excerpt: Whatever students may be doing to change the world—and they are clearly doing a good deal—it could turn out that, in the end, it is rather easier to change the world than the… More

110 Livingston Street by David Rogers Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers Reviewed." Review of 110 Livingston Street by David Rogers, Commentary, May, 1969.
Excerpt: One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of… More

Is Busing Necessary?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is Busing Necessary?" Commentary, 1972.
Excerpt: It is the fate of any social reform in the United States—perhaps anywhere—that, instituted by enthusiasts, men of vision, politicians, statesmen, it is soon put into the… More

Ethnicity and the Schools

– Glazer, Nathan. "Ethnicity and The Schools." Commentary, September, 1974.
Excerpt: It is not easy to find the words that would accurately describe the current wave of ethnic feeling which seems now to be sweeping over America. Even the word “wave” may strike… More

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement, by Robert Will Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'; 'Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement', by Robert Will Reviewed." Commentary, October, 1974.  
Excerpt: The main themes of Time on the Cross are already familiar: they have been presented in book reviews, in newspaper reports, in television programs. Fogel and Engerman have… More

Who Wants Higher Education Even When It’s Free?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Who Wants Higher Education Even When It's Free?" The Public Interest, 1975.
Excerpt: For the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The… More

Why Bakke Won’t End Reverse Discrimination: 2

– Glazer, Nathan. "Why Bakke Won't End Reverse Discrimination: 2." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: If the long opinion written by Justice Powell in the Bakke case were truly “the judgment of the Court,” then I believe there would be grounds for satisfaction among those of us… More

The Attack on the Professions

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Attack on the Professions." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: Professionalism, professionalization, and the professions are increasingly central to any grasp of modern societies, yet persistently elude proper understanding. On the one hand,… More

Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?" The Public Interest 56 (1979): 43-65.
Excerpt: The history of the Federal government’s regulation of business is much longer than that of its regulation of the universities and colleges. Until the middle 1960’s or so, its… More

Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks

– Glazer, Nathan and Reed Ueda. Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1983.
By comparing six American history textbooks, Glazer and Ueda find an attempt by the authors to foster understanding and respect toward all ethnic groups.  Yet, they believe U.S. ethnic… More

The affirmative action stalemate

– Glazer, Nathan. "The affirmative action stalemate." The Public Interest 86 (1988): 99-114.
Excerpt: Ten years ago the Supreme Court handed down its first decision on affirmative action. It dealt with the case of an applicant who had been denied admission to a medical school,… More

The real world of urban education

– Glazer, Nathan. "The real world of urban education." The Public Interest 106 (1992): 57-75.
Excerpt: We are now in the eighth year of a fever of concern about the quality of American education that has been unparalleled in the history of the republic. We can date it from the 1983… More

A human capital policy for the cities

– Glazer, Nathan. "A human capital policy for the cities." The Public Interest 112 (1993): 27-49.
Excerpt: A new national administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of… More

Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy

– Glazer, Nathan. "Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy." The Public Interest 120 (1995): 14-40.
Excerpt: Professors Michael Levin and Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York have both been in the news—Professor Jeffries is still in the news—for things they have written… More

We Are All Multiculturalists Now

– Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Glazer explores the changes in American society, arguing that the “melting pot” and assimilation have been discarded in favor of multiculturalism. He highlights what this change means… More

Shame of the Nation: Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "Shame of the Nation." Review of Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol, The New York Times, September 25, 2005.
Excerpt: Jonathan Kozol has been writing books rather similar to this one since “Death at an Early Age” in 1968. He is persistent, it is true, but so is the problem that has… More

What Happened to the Social Agenda?

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened to the Social Agenda?" The American Scholar (2007).
Excerpt: Seven years ago, I was asked to address the 1950 class of the Harvard Graduate School of Design at their 50th reunion in Cambridge. One sentence in the invitation from Robert… More

Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting

– Glazer, Nathan. "Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting." Education Next 7 (2007).
Excerpt: Why We Vote is a provocative interpretation of the factors that determine participation in our democratic processes, and specifically voting, the form of participation available to… More

Inside the Testing Factory

– Glazer, Nathan. "Inside the Testing Factory." Education Next, 2008.
Excerpt: No Child Left Behind, aside from its other effects, has generated a new kind of “successful schools” book, one which looks at schools that have done better than expected on… More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker." Education Next 8 no. 2 (2008).
Excerpt: “Madman or Visionary?” reads the publicity material that accompanies this biography of Albert Shanker. The dust jacket describes the paradigmatic moment in Woody Allen’s 1973… More

Preschool Politics: States’ efforts to reach the very young

– Glazer, Nathan. "Preschool Politics: States' efforts to reach the very young." Education Next 8 no. 3 (2008).
Excerpt: A holiday-themed campaign ad for Hillary Clinton showed the candidate affixing to boxes wrapped in shiny paper gift tags marked with campaign issues, with the final tag marked… More

Purposeful Youth

– Glazer, Nathan. "Purposeful Youth." Education Next, 2009.
Excerpt: William Damon, a distinguished psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, has long been interested, along with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,… More

Examining a Massacre

– Glazer, Nathan. "Examining a Massacre." Review of Columbine by David Cullen, Education Next, Winter 2010.
Excerpt: This book is clearly the last word on Columbine. The author has reported on the Columbine high-school massacre in various magazines and newspapers since 1999; he has interviewed,… More

Equal Knowledge

– Glazer, Nathan. "Equal Knowledge." Review of The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Education Next, Summer 2010.
Excerpt: E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education. It is a simple idea, but has… More

Lessons from a Reformer

– Glazer, Nathan. "Lessons from a Reformer." Review of As Good As It Gets by Larry Cuban, Education Next, Fall 2010.
Excerpt: Larry Cuban is a prolific and insightful chronicler and analyst of our efforts at urban school reform and improvement over the last few decades. In As Good As It Gets he adds the… More

Speech Acts

– Glazer, Nathan. "Speech Acts." Review of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus, The New Republic, December 20, 2010.
Excerpt: Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of… More

E Pluribus Plures

– Glazer, Nathan. "E Pluribus Plures." Review of Patriotic Pluralism by Jeffrey E. Mirel, Education Next, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Americanization, argues education historian Jeffrey Mirel in Patriotic Pluralism, both the process and the term, has been widely misunderstood and too narrowly interpreted in the… More

Whatever Happened to Integration?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Whatever Happened to Integration?" Review of Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Summer 2011.
Excerpt: The two schools referred to in the title of this book are Thomas Jefferson (“Tee-Jay”) High School in Richmond, Virginia, and Freeman High School, in suburban Henrico County.… More

Cautionary Tale

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cautionary Tale." Review of Schoolhouse of Cards by Eugene Hickok and Collision Course by Paul Manna, Education Next, Fall 2011.
Excerpt: Whatever Possessed the President? was the unlikely title of Robert C. Wood’s memoir of urban policy during the 1960s. The same thought springs to mind in reading these two books… More

Green Dot Takeover

– Glazer, Nathan. "Green Dot Takeover." Review of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School by Alexander Russo, Education Next, 2012.
Excerpt: Neither “stray dogs” nor “saints” play any role in Alexander Russo’s account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to… More

Great Teachers in the Classroom?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Great Teachers in the Classroom?" Review of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill, Education Next, Spring 2012.
Excerpt: Steven Brill’s Class Warfare must be the most prominently reviewed book on education in decades: a lengthy front-page review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times Book Review, a… More

Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform

– Glazer, Nathan. "Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform." Review of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political by Robert Maranto and Michael Q. McShane, Education Next, Fall 2012.
Excerpt: This book, and this review, will be published while the presidential campaign is in full swing, and whether there will be anything more to be said about President Obama’s efforts… More

Action Civics

– Glazer, Nathan. "Action Civics." Review of No Citizen Left Behind by Meira Levinson, Education Next, Spring 2013.
Excerpt: Meira Levinson is not your run-of-the-mill or even your teach-for-democracy middle-school teacher. She taught in middle schools with minority and low-income children in Atlanta and… More

To YouTube and Beyond

– Glazer, Nathan. "To YouTube and Beyond." Review of The One World School House by Salman Khan, Education Next, Summer 2013.
Excerpt: We are getting used to explosive growth in the world of the Internet (note Facebook), but Salman Khan’s creation, in a few short years, of Khan Academy, with its potentially… More

Cultural Exchange

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cultural Exchange." Review of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope by Claudia Kolker, Education Next, Fall 2013.
Excerpt: “The Immigration Spring” reads the title of the lead editorial in the New York Times today as I write this review of The Immigrant Advantage. The Times is welcoming a rare case… More

The San Diego Story

– Glazer, Nathan. "The San Diego Story." Review of Tilting at Windmills: School Reform, San Diego, and America’s Race to Renew Public Education by Richard Lee Colvin, Education Next, Winter 2014.
Excerpt: Reading this account of Alan Bersin’s successful, by the test scores, but highly contentious time as school superintendent in San Diego, 1998–2005, I could not help but think… More

Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause

– Glazer, Nathan. "Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause." Review of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, Education Next, Spring 2014.
Excerpt: Endangering Prosperity, with three distinguished authors and an eminent introducer, is devoted to one major point: the United States is truly falling behind not only the East Asian… More

Teaching

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

– Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny.  The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.
The Lonely Crowd was first published in 1950 as a sociological analysis. The authors trace the development of the new middle class as the character of contemporary society shifts from… More

Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics

– Riesman, David, and Nathan Glazer.  Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies In Character and Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
A follow up volume to the sociological studies of The Lonely Crowd, Faces in the Crowd further delves into questions of the individual and character.  The work explores the place of… More

The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Study of Man: What Americans Get Out of College." Commentary, May, 1952.
Excerpt: The uniqueness of America is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that the college-educated group, which in most countries of the Western world is the elite, is here a mass.… More

The Nation’s Children Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Nation's Children', Edited by Eli Ginzberg Reviewed." Review of The Nation's Children, by Eli Ginzberg, Commentary, June, 1960.
Excerpt: These thirty-one papers were prepared as background reading for the decennial White House Conference on Children and Youth held late in March in Washington, with a vast attendance… More

Is ‘Integration’ Possible in the New York Schools?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is 'Integration' Possible in the New York Schools?" Commentary, 1960.
Excerpt: It is now more than six years since “integration” became an issue in the New York City school system; and, very likely, at the start of the new school term some of New… More

What Happened at Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened at Berkeley." Commentary, 1965.
Excerpt: As I write this, in late December, we in Berkeley are in the Christmas lull. The university’s 18,000 undergraduates are for the most part at home, many of the faculty and… More

The New Left and Its Limits

– Glazer, Nathan. "The New Left and Its Limits." Commentary, 1968.
Excerpt: For the last few years I have looked with increasing skepticism on the analyses and the actions of the radical Left in America. By the radical Left I mean those who believe there… More

“Student Power” in Berkeley

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Student power' in Berkeley." The Public Interest, 1968.
Excerpt: Whatever students may be doing to change the world—and they are clearly doing a good deal—it could turn out that, in the end, it is rather easier to change the world than the… More

110 Livingston Street by David Rogers Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "110 Livingston Street, by David Rogers Reviewed." Review of 110 Livingston Street by David Rogers, Commentary, May, 1969.
Excerpt: One can scarcely conceive of an issue more important to the future of the cities than the failure of the New York City Board of Education and the political structure of the City of… More

Is Busing Necessary?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Is Busing Necessary?" Commentary, 1972.
Excerpt: It is the fate of any social reform in the United States—perhaps anywhere—that, instituted by enthusiasts, men of vision, politicians, statesmen, it is soon put into the… More

Ethnicity and the Schools

– Glazer, Nathan. "Ethnicity and The Schools." Commentary, September, 1974.
Excerpt: It is not easy to find the words that would accurately describe the current wave of ethnic feeling which seems now to be sweeping over America. Even the word “wave” may strike… More

Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement, by Robert Will Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "'Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'; 'Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods-A Supplement', by Robert Will Reviewed." Commentary, October, 1974.  
Excerpt: The main themes of Time on the Cross are already familiar: they have been presented in book reviews, in newspaper reports, in television programs. Fogel and Engerman have… More

Who Wants Higher Education Even When It’s Free?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Who Wants Higher Education Even When It's Free?" The Public Interest, 1975.
Excerpt: For the past decade, analysts of higher education have foreseen a time coming when almost every high school graduate would expect to enter an institution of higher education. The… More

Why Bakke Won’t End Reverse Discrimination: 2

– Glazer, Nathan. "Why Bakke Won't End Reverse Discrimination: 2." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: If the long opinion written by Justice Powell in the Bakke case were truly “the judgment of the Court,” then I believe there would be grounds for satisfaction among those of us… More

The Attack on the Professions

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Attack on the Professions." Commentary, 1978.
Excerpt: Professionalism, professionalization, and the professions are increasingly central to any grasp of modern societies, yet persistently elude proper understanding. On the one hand,… More

Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Regulating business and the universities: one problem or two?" The Public Interest 56 (1979): 43-65.
Excerpt: The history of the Federal government’s regulation of business is much longer than that of its regulation of the universities and colleges. Until the middle 1960’s or so, its… More

Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks

– Glazer, Nathan and Reed Ueda. Ethnic Groups in History Textbooks. Washington: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1983.
By comparing six American history textbooks, Glazer and Ueda find an attempt by the authors to foster understanding and respect toward all ethnic groups.  Yet, they believe U.S. ethnic… More

The affirmative action stalemate

– Glazer, Nathan. "The affirmative action stalemate." The Public Interest 86 (1988): 99-114.
Excerpt: Ten years ago the Supreme Court handed down its first decision on affirmative action. It dealt with the case of an applicant who had been denied admission to a medical school,… More

The real world of urban education

– Glazer, Nathan. "The real world of urban education." The Public Interest 106 (1992): 57-75.
Excerpt: We are now in the eighth year of a fever of concern about the quality of American education that has been unparalleled in the history of the republic. We can date it from the 1983… More

A human capital policy for the cities

– Glazer, Nathan. "A human capital policy for the cities." The Public Interest 112 (1993): 27-49.
Excerpt: A new national administration has taken office, one of whose defining characteristics is its commitment to human capital investment, which it sees as crucial for the restoration of… More

Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy

– Glazer, Nathan. "Levin, Jeffries, and the fate of academic autonomy." The Public Interest 120 (1995): 14-40.
Excerpt: Professors Michael Levin and Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York have both been in the news—Professor Jeffries is still in the news—for things they have written… More

We Are All Multiculturalists Now

– Glazer, Nathan. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Glazer explores the changes in American society, arguing that the “melting pot” and assimilation have been discarded in favor of multiculturalism. He highlights what this change means… More

Shame of the Nation: Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol Reviewed

– Glazer, Nathan. "Shame of the Nation." Review of Separate and Unequal by Jonathan Kozol, The New York Times, September 25, 2005.
Excerpt: Jonathan Kozol has been writing books rather similar to this one since “Death at an Early Age” in 1968. He is persistent, it is true, but so is the problem that has… More

What Happened to the Social Agenda?

– Glazer, Nathan. "What Happened to the Social Agenda?" The American Scholar (2007).
Excerpt: Seven years ago, I was asked to address the 1950 class of the Harvard Graduate School of Design at their 50th reunion in Cambridge. One sentence in the invitation from Robert… More

Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting

– Glazer, Nathan. "Three Rs and a V: Schools should teach the importance of voting." Education Next 7 (2007).
Excerpt: Why We Vote is a provocative interpretation of the factors that determine participation in our democratic processes, and specifically voting, the form of participation available to… More

Inside the Testing Factory

– Glazer, Nathan. "Inside the Testing Factory." Education Next, 2008.
Excerpt: No Child Left Behind, aside from its other effects, has generated a new kind of “successful schools” book, one which looks at schools that have done better than expected on… More

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker

– Glazer, Nathan. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: An honest look at union hero Albert Shanker." Education Next 8 no. 2 (2008).
Excerpt: “Madman or Visionary?” reads the publicity material that accompanies this biography of Albert Shanker. The dust jacket describes the paradigmatic moment in Woody Allen’s 1973… More

Preschool Politics: States’ efforts to reach the very young

– Glazer, Nathan. "Preschool Politics: States' efforts to reach the very young." Education Next 8 no. 3 (2008).
Excerpt: A holiday-themed campaign ad for Hillary Clinton showed the candidate affixing to boxes wrapped in shiny paper gift tags marked with campaign issues, with the final tag marked… More

Purposeful Youth

– Glazer, Nathan. "Purposeful Youth." Education Next, 2009.
Excerpt: William Damon, a distinguished psychologist and the director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, has long been interested, along with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,… More

Examining a Massacre

– Glazer, Nathan. "Examining a Massacre." Review of Columbine by David Cullen, Education Next, Winter 2010.
Excerpt: This book is clearly the last word on Columbine. The author has reported on the Columbine high-school massacre in various magazines and newspapers since 1999; he has interviewed,… More

Equal Knowledge

– Glazer, Nathan. "Equal Knowledge." Review of The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch Jr., Education Next, Summer 2010.
Excerpt: E. D. Hirsch has contributed what is to me the most persuasive idea of the past half century on how to improve the performance of American education. It is a simple idea, but has… More

Lessons from a Reformer

– Glazer, Nathan. "Lessons from a Reformer." Review of As Good As It Gets by Larry Cuban, Education Next, Fall 2010.
Excerpt: Larry Cuban is a prolific and insightful chronicler and analyst of our efforts at urban school reform and improvement over the last few decades. In As Good As It Gets he adds the… More

Speech Acts

– Glazer, Nathan. "Speech Acts." Review of Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America by Kenneth L. Marcus, The New Republic, December 20, 2010.
Excerpt: Kenneth Marcus has written what are in effect two books, one of them distinctly odd. The first book is the story of Marcus’s efforts over a number of years to have Title VI of… More

E Pluribus Plures

– Glazer, Nathan. "E Pluribus Plures." Review of Patriotic Pluralism by Jeffrey E. Mirel, Education Next, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Americanization, argues education historian Jeffrey Mirel in Patriotic Pluralism, both the process and the term, has been widely misunderstood and too narrowly interpreted in the… More

Whatever Happened to Integration?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Whatever Happened to Integration?" Review of Five Miles Away, A World Apart by James E. Ryan, Education Next, Summer 2011.
Excerpt: The two schools referred to in the title of this book are Thomas Jefferson (“Tee-Jay”) High School in Richmond, Virginia, and Freeman High School, in suburban Henrico County.… More

Cautionary Tale

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cautionary Tale." Review of Schoolhouse of Cards by Eugene Hickok and Collision Course by Paul Manna, Education Next, Fall 2011.
Excerpt: Whatever Possessed the President? was the unlikely title of Robert C. Wood’s memoir of urban policy during the 1960s. The same thought springs to mind in reading these two books… More

Green Dot Takeover

– Glazer, Nathan. "Green Dot Takeover." Review of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School by Alexander Russo, Education Next, 2012.
Excerpt: Neither “stray dogs” nor “saints” play any role in Alexander Russo’s account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to… More

Great Teachers in the Classroom?

– Glazer, Nathan. "Great Teachers in the Classroom?" Review of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill, Education Next, Spring 2012.
Excerpt: Steven Brill’s Class Warfare must be the most prominently reviewed book on education in decades: a lengthy front-page review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times Book Review, a… More

Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform

– Glazer, Nathan. "Grading the President: With Race to the Top, Obama earns a B+ in ed reform." Review of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political by Robert Maranto and Michael Q. McShane, Education Next, Fall 2012.
Excerpt: This book, and this review, will be published while the presidential campaign is in full swing, and whether there will be anything more to be said about President Obama’s efforts… More

Action Civics

– Glazer, Nathan. "Action Civics." Review of No Citizen Left Behind by Meira Levinson, Education Next, Spring 2013.
Excerpt: Meira Levinson is not your run-of-the-mill or even your teach-for-democracy middle-school teacher. She taught in middle schools with minority and low-income children in Atlanta and… More

To YouTube and Beyond

– Glazer, Nathan. "To YouTube and Beyond." Review of The One World School House by Salman Khan, Education Next, Summer 2013.
Excerpt: We are getting used to explosive growth in the world of the Internet (note Facebook), but Salman Khan’s creation, in a few short years, of Khan Academy, with its potentially… More

Cultural Exchange

– Glazer, Nathan. "Cultural Exchange." Review of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness, and Hope by Claudia Kolker, Education Next, Fall 2013.
Excerpt: “The Immigration Spring” reads the title of the lead editorial in the New York Times today as I write this review of The Immigrant Advantage. The Times is welcoming a rare case… More

The San Diego Story

– Glazer, Nathan. "The San Diego Story." Review of Tilting at Windmills: School Reform, San Diego, and America’s Race to Renew Public Education by Richard Lee Colvin, Education Next, Winter 2014.
Excerpt: Reading this account of Alan Bersin’s successful, by the test scores, but highly contentious time as school superintendent in San Diego, 1998–2005, I could not help but think… More

Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause

– Glazer, Nathan. "Underachieving in America: Researchers document international gaps, a journalist seeks the cause." Review of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School by Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann, Education Next, Spring 2014.
Excerpt: Endangering Prosperity, with three distinguished authors and an eminent introducer, is devoted to one major point: the United States is truly falling behind not only the East Asian… More