College, School, AI, Maths & More

Essays on the state of education

Here are some great reads we just added to our list of essays about education.

On college:

How the Ivy League Broke America by David Brooks - The meritocracy isn’t working. We need something new

The End of the English Major by Nathan Heller - Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?

On school:

Can Teachers and Parents Get Better at Talking to One Another? by Jessica Winter - Families are more anxious than ever to find out what happens in school. But there may be value in a measure of not-knowing and not-telling.

Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene by Caitlin Flanagan - Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.

A couple of essays on the impact of AI on education:

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College by James D. Walsh - ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project

Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools? by Jay Caspian Kang - New technologies are raising suspicions about students’ work, but the controversy—like so many others swirling around American classrooms—misses the point of what we want our kids to learn.

Two about mathematics:

Math Is Personal by Jessica Nordell - How one professor changed the culture of mathematics for his students

How Math Became an Object of the Culture Wars by Jay Caspian Kang - As was true in the nineties, today’s fights about math are not entirely about what kids actually learn in their classrooms

(Click through for 10 more essays about maths)

Two classic essays about success at school:

The Lesson to Unlearn by Paul Graham - The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades.

When Success Leads to Failure by Jessica Lahey - The pressure to achieve academically is a crime against learning

(Click through for 10 more essays about success and failure)

And a pair of older essays about race and education by Nikole Hannah-Jones:

The Resegregation of Jefferson County by Nikole Hannah-Jones - What one Alabama town’s attempt to secede from its school district tells us about the fragile progress of racial integration in America

A Prescription for More Black Doctors by Nikole Hannah-Jones - How does tiny Xavier University in New Orleans manage to send more African-American students to medical school than any other college in the country?

(Click through for 30 more essays about race)

For more great writing about education, click through to the updated list.

As always, let us know what we missed.