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S4E7 – Food fight! The surprisingly contentious history of school lunch
Behind the pizza boats and tater tots lies an epic saga of conflict. Grab your tray and settle in as we explore the history of school lunch!
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Next episode will post on Aug 6th, 2021
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S4E6 – What is the purpose of public education in the USA?
What do we want from public schools, and how does that answer vary depending on whom, in our very divided nation, you ask? In this episode, I use a recent Atlantic article by George Packer, “The Four Americas,” as a frame for looking at how each of those four Americas might envision both the purpose and the future of public education in the USA.
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Next episode will post on Friday, July 23
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S4E5 – Project Based Learning: Promises and Perils
Project Based Learning is often touted, yet too infrequently practiced, in US public schools. This episode (our 50th!) addresses the questions of just what is PBL, and what are the advantages – and challenges – of trying to teach and learn in this manner?
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Next episode will post on July 9th
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S4E4 – Spare the rod: Corporal punishment in US public schools
The USA stands virtually alone among democracies in permitting schools to employ physical violence in disciplining students. This episode explores the history, permutations and present state of affairs of corporal punishment in US schools.
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Next episode will post on Friday, June 25
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S4E3 – Let’s talk about sex, maybe?
Whether US public schools should teach sex education, and just what exactly we even mean by that phrase, has been a point of contention since at least the 19th century. This episode recounts some of the major trends, currents and conflicts in the history, and present state, of school sex-ed.
Note: I only marked this episode as “explicit” to avoid any trouble with Apple Podcasts’ flagging algorithm, which might freak out at the word “sex” in the episode title. There are in fact no words in this episode that would be bleeped on daytime television, and no descriptions (explicit or otherwise) of sexual acts. Whether this comes as a relief or a disappointment is entirely up to you.
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Next episode will post on June 11th
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S4E2 – Room for contradictions: The Schooling of Chinese Americans
What challenges have Chinese Americans faced, and what victories have they won, in the quest for equal access to an education in the USA? At a time when violence and xenophobia against AAPI people is on the rise, this episode attempts to explore beyond the “model minority myths” and share some history of Chinese and other Asian Americans’ experience in US schools.
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Next episode will post on May 28, 2021
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Season 4, Episode 1: Do Schools Even Matter?
A lot of what influences students’ academic and long-term life outcomes have nothing to do with how schools are structured and how teachers teach. In the face of income inequality, structural racism and so many larger forces, does anything we talk about in this podcast really matter? We kick off Season 4 of Ed Infinitum by reviewing the research that could help us address that question.
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Next episode will post on May 14th, 2021
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S3E14 – Blowout!
We close out Season Three with a look back at the student activism of the 1968 East Los Angeles walkouts, and how Chicano students defied abusive policies and police brutality to try and improve their schools.
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Next season will begin some time in April. Please consider making a donation to keep the podcast going so I can create an excellent Fourth Season!
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S3E13 – Two voices from the COVID Classroom
Two teachers – one from a suburban middle school, one form a tech-voc agricultural school, share their unfiltered stories and opinions about what their job, their school and their students’ experience looks like right now during the pandemic.
Next episode (the season finale!) will post on Friday, Feb 21, 2021
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S3E12.5 – New Beginnings, Old Challenges
A brief set of reflections on the challenges of education from Election Day 2016 to Inauguration Day 2021.
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