I think education, particularly higher ed, is the key to the American middle class dream, such as it still exists. Over lunch one day, I asked some of my aunts and uncles why they thought anyone should go to college.  What does college do?  Mind you, everyone at the table had [...]

Quite by accident, I stumbled on a list of my great-grandfather’s published works.  Some are still in print!  This is the man who founded Peabody College, a teachers’ college in the South, now the Education School of Vanderbilt University.  I am struck by the gentle teaching and learning focus in [...]

The year is 1910.  The southeastern U.S. is still recovering from the Civil war, which devastated the region though it ended years before.  Edwin Mims and my great-grandfather Bruce Payne edit a volume – 454 pages in today’s edition! – to share the wealth of southern culture and make it [...]

Joseph Hart was an academic who fought for academic freedom, testing “the distinctions between academic freedom and freedom of speech and may have crossed those boundaries intentionally”.  Hart was Vanderbilt University’s first chair of their new Department of Education; after four years he was dismissed and the department closed. Nearby [...]