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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Askwith Education Forum, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is endowed through the generosity of Patricia Askwith Kenner and other members of the Askwith family, and acts as a galvanizing force for debate and conversation about education in its narrowest and broadest perspectives. Each year, the Forum welcomes a number of prominent people from diverse fields to speak about issues relevant to education and children. Recent topics have included immigration, values, affirmative action, education reform, and the arts. All of these events are free and open to the public.break

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/askwith

Paradigm Spinning: Artists as Agents of Social Change

Wed, Mar 14, 2001

Suzi Gablik departs from what she calls "the faded ethos of modernism," and explains why she sees artists as agents of social change. This lecture is part of the Arts in Education Program's John Landrum Bryant Lecture Performance Series.

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W.B. Yeats: The Arch-Poet

Wed, Dec 10, 2003

Roy Foster speaks about the final volume in his acclaimed biography W.B. Yeats, A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939. **Roy Foster**is the Carroll professor of Irish history at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Hartford College. He is author of numerous books including Charles Stewart Parnell and Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life.

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Louis Menand: Pragmatism's Three Moments

Thu, Feb 12, 2004

Louis Menand lectures on pragmatism, a distinctly American philosophy based on experience and experiment rather than fixed principles. Louis Menand, professor of English and American literature and language in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty, is the author of *The Metaphysical Club* (2001), an exploration of American pragmatism that examines the transformation of American intellectual thought from 1865 to 1919 and explores the development of the pragmatism philosophy.

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Liberal and Conservative Theories on Urban School Change

Mon, Mar 15, 2004

Charles Payne of Duke University, and author of *I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Movement* discusses "A Curse on Both Their Houses: Liberal and Conservative Theories of Urban School Change."

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18,190 Days: Brown v. Board of Education

Fri, Mar 5, 2004

On the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this panel discussion considers the topic "18,190 Days of (de)Segregation: How Far Have We Come?" with Angelo Ancheta, Mitchell Chang, Vanessa Siddle Walker, and Charles Willie.

Civil Rights Movement Series

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson

Thu, Nov 20, 2003

In "Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson", author Gore Vidal takes readers to a time when America's founding fathers fought and worked to create a new country. Among Vidal's revelations: Benjamin Franklin believed the Constitution was flawed and predicted it eventually would fail; that the Revolution was kept alive only by the force of Washington's personality and "the cleverness of our diplomats" (including Franklin, Jefferson and Adams) in convincing France to come to America's aid.

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College Sports and Educational Values

Mon, Dec 1, 2003

William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students, as described in their book, *Reclaiming the Game*. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. They examine the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform. Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies *The Shape of the River* and *The Game of Life*, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at 33 academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes "under-perform." In other words, they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades.

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(Not) Talking About Race Talk

Wed, May 5, 2004

Mica Pollock discusses race talk dilemmas with local educators, as presented in her new book, Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School.

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Cognitive Science and the Science of Educational Policy

Thu, Nov 18, 2004

Michael Feuer, PhD, of the National Research Council, discusses the frayed link between cognitive science and the science of education policy. He argues that patching this link encourages the development of more rational programs of educational improvement, and more reasonable expectations for reform and research. Dr Feuer explains how cognitive science has changed the way we understand and study human decision-making and rational judgment, and is a source of much of what we now know (or believe) about teaching and learning. However, this 'science of rationality' has thus far had little impact on how we think about education policy and research. In this first lecture from a series, titled "The Science of Rationality and the Rationality of Science," Dr Feuer reviews several decades of cognitive research, providing the basis for subsequent lectures that focus on the complexities of education policy and research, and the need for a cognitively appropriate approach to these issues. Michael Feuer is executive director of the division of behavioral and social sciences and education at the National Research Council of the National Academies. He holds a PhD in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Chinese Americans: Compelled to Excel

Wed, Dec 8, 2004

Vivian Louie, drawing on interviews with second-generation Chinese Americans attending a public, commuter university and a highly selective private university, discusses the power that race and class play in shaping educational experiences. Louie's work is introduced by Mary Waters, chair of the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Panelists will include Suzanne Lee, principal of the Josiah Quincy School in Boston, and Peter Law, senior guidance counselor at Charlestown High School. In the contemporary American imagination, Asian Americans are considered the quintessential immigrant success story, a powerful example of how the culture of immigrant families (rather than race and class) matters in education and upward mobility. Louie finds that Chinese immigrant families see higher education as a necessary safeguard against potential racial discrimination, and class shapes different paths to college. The views and experiences of Chinese Americans with schooling and the identities they are forming have much to do with the opportunities, challenges and contradictions that immigrants and their children confront in the United States.

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