Every January since 2011, AEI’s Rick Hess has released his Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, which recognize the academics who had the greatest influence on educational policy over the previous 12 months. Working with a selection committee, he ranks the top 200, using a scoring system that he takes pains to explain; he also provides separate lists of the most influential scholars in different disciplines and the most prominent junior faculty members.
Policy wonks anticipate the results keenly. The results are, however, also helpful for those who care deeply about education but are not experts: A good way to figure out what is going on in our schools—and what people think should be going on—is to follow up on the names on the lists and read books, articles, and tweets by and about these scholars. Naturally there is some subjectivity in the rankings, and one point is of particular interest. In Hess’s words: “There are some academics that dabble (quite successfully) in education but for whom education is only a sideline. They are not included in these rankings.”
Who is left off? I asked Hess, who told me that at least in the last five years, he does not believe anyone was omitted from the 200 who would have been included had his committee been inclined to consider dabblers. If this is so, then the rankings paint a damning picture of the effect—or, rather, non-effect—the so-called public humanities have on what goes on in our classrooms, for nearly all the scholars practice one of five non-humanistic disciplines: psychology (four of the top 10 in 2023), sociology (two), “curriculum, instruction, and administration” (two), economics (one), and “government and policy” (none, but two in the second 10).
The outlier is John McWhorter (ranked #6), the only linguist among the 200. I admire McWhorter tremendously and am delighted that he is so high on the list, but I would not have thought the committee would consider him primarily a scholar of education. There are also seven scholars of history (all but one of whom have their primary appointment in an ed school), three of law, two of anthropology, and one of medicine. You will not find any philosophers, never mind professors of English.
Even if a few academic humanists did make the cut—a shout-out here to historian Amna Khalid (#193)—the operative words are “a few.” If you want to have an effect on education today, you pretty much have to be a social scientist. Now, I am obviously not against data! We need to know what ideas and methods will strengthen the knowledge and performance of the coming generations.
That said, we are in a bad state when we spend all our time worrying about quantitative “learning outcomes.” And we are also in a bad state when even as distinguished a scholar of education as psychologist Angela Duckworth (#2), whose work on grit has garnered much praise but also some criticism, states, obviously incorrectly, that “you cannot study what you cannot measure.”
Different people will have different views on how important the following are at one or another stage in our educational system from preschool to PhD, but in our rush to calculate every last thing, we run the danger of ignoring other goals, such as the development of rationality, moral thinking, civic-mindedness, and overall sound judgment. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes—philosophers all—would not be pleased.
Being on the list doesn’t mean that people should pay attention to you: Ranked #3 is the infamous Jo Boaler. But not being on the list suggests that people are not paying attention to you. Of course, there could be good reason for this: Garion Frankel’s takedown “What are Philosophers of Education even Talking about?” makes for depressing reading. Depressing, too, is the summer 2022 issue of Daedalus on the public humanities, which concentrates on how “the humanities help us understand urgent public concerns, such as climate change, racial justice, and public health.” No wonder ordinary citizens have no time for the humanities when the editors introduce the subject by stating that “the past two years point to the vital role the humanities play in society. To name just two recent examples, this role surfaced in public efforts to understand and respond to the human dimensions of pandemics and policing.” Perhaps instead public humanists might have given reasons for keeping schools open and safe?
Humanistic forays into education that everyone should heed—that’s another article. For now, I’ll say only that I eagerly await the next book by two political philosophers at AEI, Ben and Jenna Storey, tentatively titled The Art of Choosing: How Liberal Education Should Prepare You for Life.
Preparation for life: Now there’s a fine summary of what our educational goal should be.
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