Should schools prepare us for the economy we have or for the world we cannot yet imagine? Can we teach students to both follow rules and question them at the same time? And what happens to learning when fear, rather than curiosity, shapes what we are allowed to talk about?

Jonathan Zimmerman is one of America’s leading historians of education and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. His work examines how schools mirror and shape the broader culture, exploring the intersection of teaching, politics, and public life. He is the author of The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America, Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, and The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools. Through both scholarship and public writing, he has become a national voice for open dialogue, democratic education, and intellectual humility in civic life.

In this episode, Jonathan and I explore the civic and moral heart of education. We discuss how the modern obsession with intelligence, testing, and sorting students has replaced older ideals of citizenship and curiosity. Jonathan traces the history of schooling in America, from its roots in nation-building to the rise of IQ tests and vocational training, showing how education became a mechanism for ranking rather than awakening minds.

We talk about the delicate balance between order and liberty in every classroom, and why true democratic education requires both. Jonathan reflects on the fear that drives censorship and conformity, the loss of joy and wonder in schools, and how art and play once helped students learn for the sake of learning itself. Together, we imagine what it would mean to treat teaching as an intellectual act—one as complex and mysterious as any scientific discovery—and to rebuild an education system that prepares people not just for work, but for life as free and thoughtful citizens.