As the author of this article read through the fascinating ruminations of Drs. Albisetti, Finkelstein, Thelin, and Urban, it seemed to him that two basic points emerge, one conceptual and one methodological. Conceptually, Albisetti, Finkelstein, and Urban are asking historians of education to move away from national frames of reference to either a…

Attempting to establish an agenda for one's own research is often challenging; trying to do so for a broad swath of one's field is even more so. James Albisetti accepted the invitation to propose one in the hope that graduate students and younger colleagues, especially those willing to put in the work to obtain at least reading fluency…

The author of this article, James W. Fraser, is Professor of History and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. He begins this article with an expression of his gratitude to Robert Hampel and the editors of "The History of Education Quarterly" for commissioning the four…

The author wishes to divide this essay into two sections, one indicating things he might have added to a few earlier works, and a second indicating a project or two that he did not complete but would like to have done. First he discusses the incomplete projects. He begins by saying that he has done a lot of work on teacher organizations and has…

Lurking in the shadows of education history are networks of human interaction, transcultural encounters, forms of global connection, and dispersed sites of cultural teaching and learning that are barely visible in the master narratives of education history. Who would have thought a half-century ago that we would become witnesses and participants…

The "Partial Agenda for Modern European Educational History" proposed by Albisetti focuses primarily on the nineteenth century, and on some large-scale trends and issues, such as those relating to education and secondary instruction for women. Discussing this issue implies--especially in the diverse and heterogeneous context of…

As a historian of education, what excites you and compels you to keep doing scholarly work? If mortality were not an issue, how might you find your continued place in the field among ideas and sources that are dauntingly and increasingly vast? What is the work you most want to do? Jackie Blount provides her response herein: She would want to…

To introduce their examination of the social production of segregated space and power relations in Oxnard, California from 1934 to 1954, the authors utilize portions of a letter written by Alice Shaffer, April 21, 1938, to the Oxnard School Board of Trustees. Shaffer outlines the seemingly shared concerns of her neighbors about a disruption of the…

"The value of the Art Education becomes more and more apparent as a means of honorable support and of high culture and enjoyment," stated the catalog of Ingham University in western New York State in 1863. The Art Department there would prepare "pupils for Teachers and Practical Artists." This statement reveals some of the vocational options for…

Due to its ascendancy as the administrative and commercial center of early modern England, London experienced sustained growth in the latter half of the sixteenth century, as waves of rural immigrants sought to enhance their material conditions by tapping into the city's bustling occupational and civic networks. The resultant crowded urban…

"Newsweek" ran an article on "The Homosexual Teacher" in December 1978. At the end of a tumultuous two-year period framed by Anita Bryant's anti-gay campaign in South Florida and John Briggs' proposition to bar gay and lesbian educators from working in California public schools, reporters concluded, "Most homosexual teachers are deeply plagued by…

This essay is an exploratory history of American educators as viewed through the lens of disability studies. By this the author means that she is looking at the history of school teachers with disability as the primary marker of social relations, in much the same way that she and others have looked at the history of education through the primary…

In this article, the author focuses on the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and educational reform. The Klan's meteoric rise to national prominence in the 1920s has attracted a great deal of attention from historians, yet the group and its popularity during this time frame remain poorly understood. This is due in part to the fact that Klan symbols such…

One of the vexing ambiguities in the historiography of the civic republican tradition has been just when and how republicanism ended. The American Revolution itself, according to Gordon Wood and J. G. A. Pocock, was waged for republican principles, but the government established in its wake represented what Wood called "the end of classical…

The launch of "Sputnik" in 1957 sparked a crisis in American education. Suddenly threatened by superior Soviet technology, progressive educators' concern for children's preferences, health, and adjustment in school yielded to public demands for more basic learning and academic skills. Congress soon passed the National Defense Education Act,…