Early American historians provided the public and policy-makers with information about US history that provided both entertainment and policy suggestions. As American historians became more professionalised in the early twentieth century, they concentrated more on their own scholarly concerns and less on policy-relevant writings. In recent…

The idea for this article proceeds from personal, practical, and emotional experience and reflections on holding the position of the Minister for Education and Science during the period of the economic crisis in Latvia (2007-2010). The article consists of three parts. The first part outlines the potential of a position in power with a particular…

Education during World War I has been a relatively unexplored field of research, especially in the case of countries with a neutral stance in that war. The Netherlands is one such country. This article argues that even though the Netherlands was politically neutral, it was and considered itself a part of western civilisation and shared in the…

In recent years, visual records have come to be seen as important sources of information in the study of education and its history. However, most of the images used in this way simply provide a glimpse--though admittedly a precise one--of only one moment in the educational process. Graphic verisimilitude is not only to be found in these images; it…

This article considers the emergence of classroom wall charts as a teaching technology in Swedish elementary schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using Biblical history teaching as an example. There has been some work done internationally on wall charts as an instructional technology, but few studies have looked at their…

The progressive education movement was known in Spain from its very inception, and in fact many of its pedagogical theories and practices reached Spain before reaching other European countries. Yet traditional historiography has always maintained that Spain was never integrated in the progressive education movement, a misconception that helps…

In the context of the international exchange of school reform ideas and concepts, the new schools in Hamburg were recognised as exemplary instances of a revolutionary and forceful reform in the public elementary school systems. Based on studies of transfer and their premise that the transnational transfer of ideas, practices and objects does not…

In the period 1919-1933 the experimental and community schools in Hamburg tried to put into practice a new model of schooling without a set curriculum that was based on providing a considerable amount of freedom for pupils and teachers. These experiences were introduced in the Netherlands by way of magazines published by the New Education…

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

"The Peckham Experiment" (Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985) is a book about the Peckham Health Centre (1935-1950), which was a scientific experiment and community centre set up to identify and foster conditions of good health for local working-class families in South London. The book was…

This article analyses the schooling process in rural areas of Galicia (Spain) from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, considering educational initiatives promoted by both the state and the rural population. The former, which were governed by the official school culture, were driven by a moralistic approach; the latter, within the…

Finnish school teachers are unlike their colleagues in many countries, for their ethos and skills have traditionally formed the basis for a profession which has been very loyal to the state and to the changing educational ideologies of the government. Critical historical periods of wars and social revolutions have, however, produced--to a small…

To date, the historical entanglement of disability and happiness has not been considered an object worth of historical inquiry. Nor has the intersection of disability and emotions been used as a lens to examine the history of disability. Our paper aims at filling this academic void by analysing a wide range of philosophical, anthropological,…

Colin Ward (1924-2010) was an anarchist and educator who, together with Anthony Fyson, was employed as education officer for the Town and Country Planning Association in the UK during the 1970s. He is best known for his two books about childhood, "The Child in the City" (1978) and "The Child in the Country" (1988). The book he…

In this article we will contribute to the contemporary theoretical debate about film by considering, from a history-of-education perspective, the film "Zéro de conduite" by Jean Vigo (1905--1934). This film is classified under the umbrella of "poetic realism": a product of "cinéma de gauche" and an avant-gardist,…