S
eeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
By James C. Scott (Yale University Press, 1998)
The book that did the most to change the way I think about education isn’t about education at all. It’s about forestry and farming, taxation and urban planning in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America — definitely not about schools in the United States. Yet Seeing Like a State, by James C. Scott, helped me understand the relationship between educational policy and practice in an entirely new way. Much of my work, 15 years later, is still shaped by ideas that began taking form in the margins of that book. I’ve learned most of what I know about schools through my experience as a teacher, my work alongside educators, and my research inside schools and districts. But I learned how to look at schools by reading and talking with people like James Scott.
Reflecting on how I’ve spent my career so far — writing about the limits of top-down directives, the challenges of scale, the importance of local knowledge, and the wisdom of inclusive decision making — I can’t help but wonder where I’d be if I had decided to skip that assignment on the syllabus.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Schneider
Jack Schneider is the Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the UMass Center for Education Policy.
