this field is required

As you might know, I’m begin­ning a new PhD pro­gram this fall. This one is in phi­los­o­phy and edu­ca­tion, instead of just phi­los­o­phy. I’ve been very inter­ested in edu­ca­tion for a few years now, and I know some things about it, but basi­cally just enough to be dan­ger­ous and to write a decent admis­sions appli­ca­tion. This sum­mer needs to be a time of tran­si­tion to my new spe­cialty field.

To that end, I have recently begun read­ing a LOT more edu­ca­tion stuff — prob­a­bly quadru­pled the num­ber of blogs, and I have a num­ber of education-related books on deck. One thing that has become imme­di­ately appar­ent to me is that edu­ca­tion, par­tic­u­larly ed pol­icy, is crazy com­pli­cated and very highly inter­dis­ci­pli­nary. It involves psy­chol­ogy, soci­ol­ogy, his­tory, eco­nom­ics, sta­tis­tics, etc.

While I’ll be doing a con­cen­tra­tion in ed pol­icy, my work will have a more overtly philo­soph­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion than other pol­icy people’s. I’m inter­ested in dis­tinc­tively moral ques­tions sur­round­ing edu­ca­tion. Answers to moral ques­tions are informed by empir­i­cal infor­ma­tion, but not always straight­for­wardly. As such, and as I’ve writ­ten before, I don’t see this move as leav­ing phi­los­o­phy at all. It’s just a strate­gic move that is likely to be more reward­ing per­son­ally, and pos­si­bly professionally.

Even so, I want always to know exactly what’s going on in edu­ca­tion today. Most of my col­leagues at Teach­ers Col­lege will *not* be philoso­phers, and most of the pro­fes­sors and guest speak­ers will be more on-the-ground in edu­ca­tion. I can’t demand that they all become inter­ested in phi­los­o­phy on my terms, but I can try to make myself a very inter­est­ing philoso­pher who speaks to them and their inter­ests. I don’t like the idea of spend­ing a life­time doing phi­los­o­phy that no one out­side of phi­los­o­phy really cares about, so achiev­ing this is impor­tant to me.

So, you’ll see my Google Reader shar­ing, tweets, and blog­ging turn sub­stan­tially in this direc­tion. Please pass along any education-related items of inter­est (book rec­om­men­da­tions, news arti­cles, etc.) that you think I should know about. I look for­ward to being that friend of yours who fills the edu­ca­tion niche in your life.