Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tribute to Daniel Tanner (1926–2023)Jessica HeybachOn September 23, 2023, education lost one of its most prolific writers and staunchest defenders. Dan Tanner lived 97 years and spent most of his life thinking and writing about education and the project of schooling. Dan was a longtime member of the John Dewey Society (JDS) and dedicated his life's work to the study of curriculum. He served as the president of JDS from 2002 to 2004 and won the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. Dan Tanner was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Founding Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, where he received the Lifetime Achievement Award. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Professors of Education. He held faculty positions at Purdue, Northwestern, and Rutgers Universities, and established the doctoral program in curriculum studies at Rutgers University.To honor Dan's contributions to JDS and education broadly, Education and Culture offers to its readers this tribute to his work. Drawing from interviews with three academics who call Dan a mentor, it is clear his life's work stretches far beyond what was printed in the many books and articles he contributed during his prolific career.As has been repeated in many places, Dan Tanner was a titan and contributed a significant body of research and scholarship. He wrote over fifteen books, including Schools for Youth: Change and Challenge in Secondary Education and Crusade for Democracy: Progressive Education at the Crossroads. With Laurel Tanner, he coauthored History of the School Curriculum and four editions of Curriculum Development: Theory into Practice. Moreover, Tanner also published dozens of articles in a variety of venues within both scholarly and popular realms. He contributed a diverse body of scholarship that serves as the bedrock of curriculum studies and that reached well beyond the walls of the academy to engage various audiences. A recent article describing his $1 million dollar donation to Ohio State University for an endowed professorship attributes his early life as an orphan living in foster care and his relationship with teachers to having fueled his curiosity regarding adolescence and its importance in the development of both citizens and a nation.1 He came to understand that "Teachers [End Page 76] saved me. … They opened up the world to me." In regard to adolescence, he claimed, "It may last your whole life or may change, but adolescence is the period when you form an ideology." Having experienced the power of schooling and curriculum in the transformation of his own life as a young person, he remained committed to a holistic view of curriculum and academic disciplines that is often neglected in education today. As one of his former students stated: "His life work was asking 'How can we provide educational experiences for all kids that will have the kind of empowering impact that it had on him?'"To offer a candid look at Dan Tanner's impact, I interviewed three academics who worked closely with him as doctoral students or in their early career. These interviews explored Dan's impact on their thinking, career, and life. In particular, this tribute will take up Dan's legacy as a mentor in what one interviewee described as "a lost generation" of academics. It was clear from these discussions that Dan was complex and exacting—he pushed his students to think critically and carefully. He could suspend the demands of material and political constraints and move beyond the obvious answers to educational and social problems. One of his former students describes a classroom exchange where he asked Dan, "Can you tell me a school where they actually do that?" in relation to some alternative visions of what could go on in school. "And Dan couldn't, but that wasn't a problem for Dan. That means, well, we should be doing this. Just because no one's doing it doesn't mean its not a good thing to do."He was described as a generous mentor who challenged students in unanticipated ways. One asserted that "he transformed my view of school." Dan clearly articulated a view of schooling that caught...