#48: The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy with Jon Shelton

Sounds About Right: Audiobooks to Help Us Understand the World

Jon Shelton is associate professor and chair of democracy and justice studies. He is the author of The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2023) and Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order, which was the winner of the International Standing Conference of the History of Education’s First Book Award in 2018.
Shelton has also published work in the Washington Post, Dissent, Jacobin, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications. He is the Vice-Chair of the city of Green Bay’s first ever Equal Rights Commission and sits on the Board of Directors for the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Wisconsin Labor History Society. He also serves as Vice-President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.
I spoke to him about his latest book The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy .

Some of the topics we discussed includes:

• What is The Education Myth?
• Must we rethink about public education to restore democracy?
• What 'human capital' means, in the context that it is used in the book?
• The G.I. Bill (formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944) and its reference to education.
• The problematic nature the G.I. Bill was applied in, that discriminated against African Americans.
• Ronald Reagan's approach to the education myth and how it was different to the prominent figures beforehand.
• How Bill Clinton did more fore the education myth than any other president.
• Is The Education Myth coming undone?

The Book and Audiobook: The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy is out now.


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