Have You Heard

50 episodes listed below

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Education politics, with history in the room.

The gist

Have You Heard follows education debates from the policy meeting to the kindergarten classroom. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider mix history, reporting, guest scholarship, and dry humor while tracing how public schools become battlegrounds over democracy, curriculum, family life, and power.

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About Have You Heard

Have You Heard is an education show built around the argument that schools are never just schools. They are where policy, history, family values, market pressure, childhood, and democracy keep colliding. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider bring a conversational rhythm to subjects that can otherwise sound procedural or abstract. The show can start with a joke about LinkedIn, kindergarten memories, or an awkward old recording setup, then move quickly into the deeper structure of a policy fight. Recent episodes examine literacy battles, sex education, school vouchers, student activism, civic disagreement, kindergarten, artificial intelligence hype, and attempts to pull education back toward a less educated past. The through line is public education as a shared civic project. That makes the show especially attentive to what gets lost when schooling is reduced to test scores, scripted curriculum, vouchers, software, or market language. Its historical range is one of its strengths. A sex education episode reaches back through film strips, moral panic, fear-based instruction, and recurring uncertainty over whether schools or churches should take responsibility. A student activism episode connects archival research, FBI surveillance, underground newspapers, walkouts, and present-day student protest. A kindergarten episode questions the pressure to turn early childhood into drills, screens, and reading-law anxiety. The voucher coverage is similarly political, but not simple: it follows grassroots conservatives who see state funding as government intrusion and betrayal. The show is not detached from its commitments. It clearly values public schools, teachers, democratic participation, and the social life of classrooms. Still, it tends to earn its position through context rather than slogans. The hosts are willing to be ambivalent, to think aloud, and to let complicated conflicts stay complicated. Humor keeps the pacing human. The weeds are part of the product. For listeners who want education news connected to history, institutions, and lived consequences, Have You Heard offers a smart, skeptical map of why school fights keep mattering.

Made for: For listeners who follow public education, democracy, curriculum fights, and school reform politics. It especially suits people who want context-rich analysis instead of quick partisan summaries.

What sets it apart: The show connects current school controversies to older civic arguments, classroom realities, and policy consequences. Its mix of reporting, scholarship, historical memory, and conversational humor makes dense education debates feel concrete.

In their own words

Occasionally funny and periodically informative, Have You Heard features journalist Jennifer Berkshire and scholar Jack Schneider as they explore the age-old quest to finally fix the nation's public schools, one policy issue at a time.

public school policyschool vouchersliteracy instructionsex educationstudent activismkindergartencurriculum politicsschools and democracy

Talks about

Education History

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Find your next episode

About Have You Heard

In their own words

Talks about

Podcasts like Have You Heard

Episodes

#216 The Blue State Blues

#215 The Fight Over Sex Education

#214 These Conservatives Are Furious About School Vouchers

#213 The Kids are Alright

#212 We’re at each other’s throats. Schools can help.

#211 Silicon Valley’s Vision for Schools is Trapped in a Cold War Fantasy

#210 The Curious Case of Kindergarten

#209 Make Education Great Again

#208 ‘A Lifetime of Hardship’

HY#207 Under the Influence

#206 Race Science is Back. It Never Went Away.

#205 Schools as Sorting Machines

#204 Collision Course

#203 Power in Numbers

#202 College Inside, College Outside

#201 Use It Or Lose It

#200 Don’t Buy the AI Hype

#199 Dangerous Learning, Dangerous Times

#198 Ethnic Studies ‘Works.’ Does That Even Matter Anymore?

#197 Taking America Back (to a Less Educated Past)

#196 The Best Schools You’ve Never Heard Of

#195 Public Education is on the Precipice

#194 Letter to a Trump Voter

#193 All Politics is Local

#192 There’s No Such Thing as a Kinesthetic Learner

#191 These Conservative Texans Oppose School Vouchers

#190 Degrees of Separation

#189 What’s Driving the Republican Party’s Radical Shift on Education?

#188 What Will a Second Trump Term Mean for Public Education?

#187 The Politics of Disruption

#186 What is High School For?

#185 Project 1825

#184 Closing Time

#183 Change of Heart

#182 Cut, Fire, Close

#181 It Takes a Village (No, Really)

#180 The Education Wars

#179 School Integration Made Kids Less Conservative

#178 Turning Down the Temperature

#177 The Opposite of Privatization is Publicization

#176 The Idaho Exception

#175 Special Education is Under Threat

#174 Religious Charter Schools are Coming. Be Worried.

#173 Did You Hear the One About the Skills Gap?

#172 Off of the Sidelines

#171 The Damage Done

#170 Can We Please Stop Talking About Harvard?

#169 Can the Democrats Win on Education?

#168 Coming to America

#167 Public Education Needs More Democracy, Not Less