Recalls a previous attempt, via the Committee of Ten, to set national academic standards in American high schools 100 years earlier, describes the effort's defeat, and explains how the objections raised then are much like the ones being raised today. The author argues that the need for national academic standards is more urgent now than ever…

Examines implications of vocational education programs through investigations of Ontario education work experience programs. Argues that work programs provide opportunities for a critical counter-hegemonic pedagogy and the ethnographic investigations of such programs are valuable as a source of both a theoretical analysis of schooling and an…