Education is endlessly strange. My entire life has been in and around schools, so I sometimes overlook this obvious observation. Maybe it’s because I’m thoroughly institutionalized. Nevertheless, I’m drawn to perplexity. I enjoy setting off for the educational frontiers to see what fresh mysteries are to be found.

I’ve been studying educational borderlands for years, both intentionally and accidentally. Charter schools, the Teach For All universe, wild innovations greased with Gates Foundation cash: that’s the backdrop of my former life as a teacher and school administrator. Now, I study institutional norms in education. I’ve explored how they disperse through policy networks or decay under the weight of hollow symbols. In my current project I’ve entered the world of NGOs and philanthropists remaking education in India. The common denominator is a fascination with educators caught in bureaucracies, tragically flawed like everyone yet working to give a better life to children on society’s margins.

FreshEd is my companion in wandering through this realm. The episodes I favor are those where guests speak with clarity, originality, and depth. The first episode I streamed was with Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, the scholar whose writings helped me first recognize the bizarreness of education. Children around the world spend hours wedged into creaky furniture, reading from dusty textbooks and memorizing arcane mathematical theorems. It’s all weird. That’s why I don’t consider “reform” a profanity, and why the coming technopocalypse strikes me as more enigma than threat.

Usually I find myself arguing with episodes. For example, Agustina Paglayan joined to discuss her provocative book Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education, showing that mass education grew less from a belief in the ideals of progress and liberty and more from an elite pre-occupation with control of the masses. Essentially, indoctrination through education was cheaper than war. The broad outlines of her argument ring true – it recalls both my mornings as a school leader watching students file through metal detectors and my work on the policy language of colonial and more recent global schooling. My guess is scholars like Anderson-Levitt would argue that mass education is like any other institution – marriage, religion, the nation-state – in that it is always locally contested and a source for multiple meanings.

Another favorite is Amy Stambach’s discussion of her excellent book The Corporate Alibi: Capitalism and the Cultural Politics of US Investments in Africa. She highlights the Dell Foundation’s bankrolling of a South African school, arguing that corporations are skilled reputation launderers. Using the mechanism of a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), Dell took advantage of gaping tax loopholes, with the added bonus of expanding their future market share. Stambach’s work is a courageous clarion call. As a fellow anthropologically-minded researcher wading through India’s morass of PPPs, though, I’m unsure what exactly desperate parents should do (a position pointedly articulated by Joanna Härmä). Cash-strapped governments similarly have few options, and though one suspects pockets are being generously lined, I’m eagerly awaiting ideas on how to stop the whole sordid business.

An interest of mine is the “scalability zeitgeist” in education (and beyond). I frequently come across disruptors who enter education with their plan to scale up the latest brilliant idea, as if they’ve discovered “what works” in solving the basic problems of corporate greed and the human lust for power. Brad Olsen’s episode challenged my thinking about the possibilities of scale. He expertly explained both the challenges of scaling in education and the detritus-laden “road of educational improvement.” (6:16 – This episode also features masterful podcast hosting by Head FreshEdder Will Brehm)). He (Dr. Olsen) also grounded the imperative to institutionalize changes in the very real and human promise of education.

Clearly, I’m a FreshEdophile. Usually, I cram in some headphones, crank the episode up to 1.25 speed, and go for a run. Something about the combination of fresh air and fresh ed, I suppose, aids the rumination process. Still, as a new “scholar,” what I’ve encountered is not always pretty. FreshEd’s tagline is “A weekly podcast that makes complex ideas in educational research easily understood,” but from where I stand (or, I guess, jog), I’m often left scratching my head, unsure what exactly guests are trying to say.

Perhaps that is unsurprising given my premise that education is inherently odd. My point is that understanding the massive upheavals in education merits a relentless openness. I’m particularly attuned to the “usefulness” of research: save the jargoneering, shelve the obscure theories, resist universalising, and get your hands dirty in understanding what education means for those doing the learning (and the educating).

That’s one reason why I’m a fan of Flux. Those episodes feel like real people confronting real issues, sitting uncomfortably with whatever they might encounter. Some of my faves include Suwandee Thatsanaprai reflecting on “internal colonisation,” Ijaaz Jackaria grappling with epistemicide (ok, that is a little jargony), and Bhavani Kunjulakshmion the power of telling one’s own story.

These episodes are perhaps not useful, but they are honest and open in their confrontations with the bewildering duplicities and hopes in the educational project. They address stories of the global, the local, the nativist and the “Western,” illustrating why those labels (warning: I’m about to betray my anti-foundationalist, post-structuralist, quasi-materialist epistemological stance) are meaningless. That’s a space from which I like to approach education: ever-shifting and uncertain.

February 1, 2026