Teacher education remains a largely unexplored area within the history of American education. This paper is an example of the types of state-specific stories that are needed as university administrators and policymakers make critical decisions about the content and purpose of teacher ed curriculum. These decisions, in turn, have a direct impact on…

In this presidential address, the author discusses how to find inspiration when writing about the history of education. He says that while the Muse can sometimes be elusive, we do not have to search far and wide to find her. The author finds his inspiration through reading, writing and talking to his colleagues and students and also by asking the…

Harry S. Broudy (1905-1998) was a vital education philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century as highlighted by numerous authors writing on his life and work. Over a 40-year period, Harry Broudy published over 300 papers and 18 books (Vandenberg 1992b). While numerous ideas are reoccurring among his publications, the content and…

Educational historians have established that progressive education was a multifaceted, diversified approach to education reform, and have recognized that such a variegated phenomenon is difficult, if not impossible, to define. Instead, historians attempt to capture the complexity of progressive education either by articulating its principal…

In a time of political turmoil in which both women (#MeToo) and black people (#BlackLivesMatter) are fighting to be heard and recognized, it is worthwhile to look at the past to perhaps uncover new narratives that can give direction. Citizenship Schools provided a way for civil rights activists to civically engage individuals who were previously…

Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" (2010) and "Reign of Error" (2013) represent a significant shift in the contemporary political dialogue on education reform. The once staunch supporter of national academic standards and market-based reforms, Ravitch reversed nearly every position she…

World War I marked an important turning point in progressive education. With the founding of the Progressive Education Association (PEA) in 1919 advocates had an organization that stood against pedagogical formalism. This essay provides a discussion of this new approach to education, the possibilities of the contributions progressive schools made…

The nineteenth century educational experiment by Amos Bronson Alcott and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody at the Temple School in Boston from 1834-1836 was generally considered a failure. Nevertheless, a narrow window of the experiment planted the seed for future interest in early childhood education by means of Peabody's (1836) "Record of a School:…

Robert Henry Thurston is presented in this article. He provides one the most significant examples of professionalizing engineering through innovative education and promoting scientific education practices in the late nineteenth century. The son of a draftsmen and steam engine mechanic, Thurston spent his early years in Providence, Rhode Island.…

Reformers during the antebellum period of American history frequently expressed contradictory ideas on the topic of female education. These contradictions illustrate the challenge historians face in pinning down the female educational vision held by antebellum-era reformers. That the classics comprised the core of colonial and revolutionary era…

This essay will discuss two educational programs to improve the living conditions of students from low income families that Pedro T. Orata conducted during the middle years of the twentieth century. The question this paper will investigate is whether Orata considered the people he was trying to help as being trapped by the conditions of poverty to…

Americans seem to agree that social studies education is important for citizens in a democracy, but they have disagreed vociferously about what constitutes the social studies, who should teach it, what methods are most effective, and if different students need different curriculum or instruction. This history of conflict is called the "social…

This article focuses on the historical roots of Ernest Boyer's most popular work, "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate" (1990). Seeking to transcend the traditional view of scholarship as simply that which is published, Boyer expanded scholarship to include four domains: discovery, application, integration, and…

In "The Transformation of the School", Lawrence Cremin warned against formulating any capsule definition of progressive education: "None exists, and none ever will; for throughout its history progressive education meant different things to different people, and these differences were only compounded by the remarkable diversity of…

Irving Babbitt and E.D. Hirsch defended the humanistic curriculum at both the beginning and end of the twentieth century, respectively. Both claimed that a set of specific knowledge needed to be passed from one generation to the next. Both found this knowledge primarily, though certainly not exclusively, through the classical Western tradition.…