The small school movement originated in the democratic ideology of Deborah Meier, who sought to create schools that gave students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders in the communities they served a voice in education. In New York City, Meier's vision was implemented haphazardly by a group of business and political elites able to pour…

This article examines the kind of space formed by philosophical discussion of education with lower-income, adult learners making their way back to structured education amidst work and life responsibilities. It explores two new social contexts that define this experience of return to education. The first is the sociability of philosophical…

The author of this article asserts that African-American author and educator Booker T. Washington's work situates him within the educational traditions of pragmatism and progressivism. The article uncovers some of Washington's hidden complexity by drawing upon and extending arguments for labeling him both an educational pragmatist and…

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Thomas Huxley (1852-1895) had different, but substantial, effects on the history of education. Rousseau's educational theories supplied the intellectual foundation for pedagogical progressivism. Huxley's educational writings helped to enlarge the scope of the British curriculum to include such things as…

The year was 1909. The United States was in the throes of tremendous social and institutional changes: a rapidly diversifying population, dramatic shifts in political and economic structures, the rise of Progressivism as a paradigm for social reform and social control, and the intense and often grating sounds of a public education system really…

Corporate business practices among leaders of higher education have increasingly come under fire during the last two decades. Questions of university leadership, however, particularly corporate practices, go back at least to the early twentieth century. This paper contrasts the views of Thorstein Veblen and Charles W. Eliot, two prominent early…

When Ellen Condliffe Lagemann described what she called the troubling history of education research, she claimed that, in the early years of the twentieth century, Edward Lee Thorndike's narrow model of science replaced John Dewey's more open ideas. According to Lagemann, sexism was an important reason for Thorndike's triumph. In describing the…