An overarching methodological focus in this issue of the "Journal of Educational Administration and History" has been to engage Michel Foucault's concern with "a history of the present". In this article, the author begins her overview of the collection in the present--specifically, and in keeping with the topic for this special issue, with a comment on the way the "education, youth, nation" nexus is expressed in this historical moment, that is, in education for global citizenship. The contributions to the issue provide important insights into how, within particular historical periods, and reflecting the socio-political circumstances peculiar to those periods, these specific modes of understanding young people and the nature, form and function of schooling were linked to meanings of citizenship and the ideal citizen. These historically contingent meanings continue to resonate today. (Contains 3 notes.)