Replied to a post by Chris Aldrich (stream.boffosocko.com)

@amandalicastro Thanks. Purchased. Even if the answer doesn't lie within, @CathyNDavidson may be one of only a few people one could trust with such a book title. Also picked up Now You See it to compare with Annie Murphy Paul's new text The Extended Mind.

I finished it Saturday evening. Sadly the answer doesn’t lay here. There’s a great history of higher education since the late 1800s specific to Charles Eliot’s ideas and the subsequent fallout. Sadly he was reforming Puritan education based on his then-current circumstances. He apparently didn’t delve back further to reverse the Puritan reforms from almost 300 years earlier.

The book is great and has some excellent solid examples to act as a guide. Thanks for the recommendation.

I still strongly suspect the pattern goes back to the Puritan educational reforms of the late 1500s with Peter Ramus. I’ll have to delve into some of his writings and perhaps the work of Walter Ong to see the outcome. If others have ideas of where to look specifically, I’d love to hear them.