Education politics, with history in the room.
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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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.
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.
School fights stop looking simple once Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider introduce the people living inside them.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A blue-state literacy fight becomes a sharp look at books, culture, and who defines classroom knowledge.
Jennifer Berkshire opens with a Michigan educator she met through LinkedIn, then uses that encounter to widen the frame around literacy policy and the quiet removal of real books from schools.
A clear look at sex education as a recurring school fight over who gets to explain sex, and how.
Sex education comes through as a recurring American school fight over who gets to explain sex, and where that responsibility should sit. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider open from sharply different memories: Schneider recalls a one-day substitute who answered questions…
A Texas voucher fight exposes how grassroots conservatives came to read political victory as betrayal.
Have You Heard turns a Texas school voucher fight into a revealing split inside conservatism, following the anger the policy has stirred among grassroots activists.
A clear, archival look at student solidarity, from FBI surveillance and underground newspapers to the pressure of walkouts.
Student activism takes shape through Aaron Fountain's High School Students Unite!, as young people in school groups begin to understand themselves as part of a shared cause before tactics move from underground newspapers to walkouts.
A thoughtful look at schools as places where students learn how to live with disagreement.
Have You Heard frames a political and historical question through the everyday life of schools: how people learn to live with disagreement when public life is offering some of its harshest lessons.
Interview radio with odd-news aftershocks.
Have You Heard?
Have You Heard #215, "The Fight Over Sex Education," opens with Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider comparing their own awkward sex-ed memories, from a one-day substitute to a Springfield, Illinois film-strip class.
["Have You Heard #214 centers on Texas's new billion-dollar school voucher program and the conservative backlash that national coverage often misses.", "Holly Plemons, a Republican precinct chair in North Central Texas, says she withdrew her son from a Fort Worth private school after it signed up for vouchers because the move felt like a subsidy and a power grab.", "Lynn Davenport, Brian and Joy Roberts, and Pastor Zach Poling warn that vouchers could bring data collection, curriculum control, and new pressure on private-school and homeschool families.", "Lainey Hawes ties the fight to Keller ISD's culture wars and a special election in Tarrant County, where local voters seemed ready to push back on the GOP."]
["Have You Heard #213, \"The Kids are Alright,\" centers on Aaron Fountain's High School Students Unite: Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Post-War America.", "Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider host the discussion and use current student walkouts against ICE as the present-day frame.", "Fountain says his research began with Pledge of Allegiance protests by high school and junior high students in New York and New Jersey.", "He describes the project as 15 years of detective work that produced a list of more than 500 independent student organizations and over 1,000 underground newspapers."]
Have You Heard?
Audrey Waters argues that Silicon Valley's AI vision for schools repeats a 1958 push-button classroom imagined by engineer Simon Ramo.
Susan Engel, a Williams College psychology professor, spent time in 29 classrooms across 15 schools in 13 states for her book American Kindergarten, and found that few offered real play areas or time to move.
Christian nationalist education activism works through two tracks: vouchers pull students from public schools, while Ten Commandments mandates and chaplains seek to reshape them.
Patrick Brosnan says Brighton Park is about 85% immigrant and describes ICE agents stopping cars and detaining people.
The hosts celebrate their 200th episode by reminiscing about their early days and a memorable interview with voucher advocate Travis Pillow.
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss how Indiana's education policies are taking the state back to a less educated past reminiscent of the 1950s.
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss how local school board battles persist beyond the national news cycle, focusing on ongoing community divisions and the material costs of contentiousness.
Jack Schneider introduces an interview with historian Adam Lotz about his book 'Mr.
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss the historical and contemporary role of schools in Americanizing immigrants, drawing parallels to the common school movement.