By Richard E. Miller
Digitized by Mike Palmquist
Published in 1998, As If Learning Mattered examines why the system of higher education has been resistant to reform. Unraveling stereotypes about conservative, liberal, and radical reform efforts, Richard E. Miller looks at what has actually happened when theories about education have been put into practice. What did Matthew Arnold do as a school inspector to promote the study of “the best that has been thought and said in our time”? Why did the Great Books program fail at the University of Chicago and succeed at a small liberal arts college in Annapolis, Maryland? How did Tony Bennett and others involved in the radical work of British cultural studies test their students’ knowledge of popular culture? How did ethnographers of schooling respond when they encountered students with apparently racist attitudes?
By raising these questions, Miller focuses attention on how students, teachers, and administrators experienced life in the academy as they negotiated the daily realities of reading lists, writing assignments, grading practices, and funding crises. By juxtaposing what educators thought about social change with what the same people actually did in the classroom, Miller successfully identified new ways to generate locally effective reform objectives for the university as it retooled itself for the information age.
