A Political Explanation of Policy Selection: The Case of Urban School Reform

Amid the torrent of reform activity in urban school systems, some proposals fare better than others. The traditional technocratic presumption is that reforms are chosen for their educational merit. I suggest that, to the contrary, institutional incentives encourage urban policymakers to emphasize symbolic appeal. Data from a 1995 study of 57 urban districts are used to compare the fate of two school reforms. The more symbolically attractive reform was supported, proposed, and enacted much more widely, although neither research nor observer responses suggested its superiority.     

Memory,history and the classical tradition

‘Memory’ is often confused and mistaken for myth; this is in turn connected with the widespread use of mistaking collective mythology and common myth for the idea of a ‘collective memory’. This essay discusses memory and history terminology in the context of the generic concept ‘classical tradition’. The case study explored here – the nineteenth-century Walhalla ‘temple’ near Regensburg in Southern Germany – is an attempt to discuss the classical tradition, focusing on archaeology and architecture rather than philology), within the parameters of the memory and history debate in contemporary historiography. The essay aims to develop the position of the iconic and symbolic importance of antiquity and the classical tradition in the memory and history debate as well as in historical writing. The concluding remarks emphasise the necessity of historicising tradition and its genealogies, conceptualised here as a tradition of legacies.     

Sourcing temper sands in ancient ceramics with U–Pb ages of detrital zircons: a southwest Pacific test case

Through use of methodology common in sedimentary geology, we apply U–Pb ages of detrital zircons to source nonlocal temper sand in an ancient ceramic assemblage recovered from Roviana Lagoon of the New Georgia Group in the Solomon Islands. Most potsherds from the Roviana Lagoon contain local volcanic sand as temper, but a small number of sherds contain anomalous granitic temper sand that does not appear to be local. To determine the origin of the anomalous temper, ages of zircons from the anomalous Roviana sherds are compared with ages of zircons in materials from Lizard Island off the Queensland coast and in sand from Muyuw Island in the Solomon Sea where generically similar granitic sands occur. U–Pb analyses of grains from the Roviana sherds yield Middle Miocene ages, while analyses of grains from Lizard Island granitic bedrock, sand, and local potsherds yield much older Permian-Triassic ages, disproving any possibility that the Roviana sherds were derived from Lizard Island, but suggesting local production of the Lizard Island sherds. Ages of grains in a sand sample from Muyuw Island are nearly identical to the ages of grains in the Roviana sherds. All grains in the Muyuw sand are Middle Miocene in age, overlapping closely with the Roviana age population. This strong similarity in detrital zircon signals indicates that the Roviana temper was likely derived from Muyuw Island sands. Our test case for the use of U–Pb ages of detrital zircons in sourcing temper sands is of only regional significance, and not of intrinsic global interest. The methodology, however, should find wide applicability for sourcing temper sands in many parts of the world, for it provides more specific data for the origins of tempers than either petrographic or chemical analysis.     

Practical surveying in schools

Analysis of detailed geomorphological mapping enables a sequence of glacial events to be established. An ice sheet whose source was to the west of the area of study is shown, by the suites of fluvioglacial landforms produced, to have down‐wasted in situ; meltwaters escaped beneath or through the ice, moving uphill across certain areas. Finally, a sub‐aerial drainage system was established and outwash terraces were spread down valley.