The "Belle Époque" quest for a modern beauty (an 'art nouveau') extended into France's system of free primary schooling, established in the 1880s by the Third Republic to educate the popular masses. Design reformers' belief in the underlying unity of the fine and applied arts, and their growing emphasis on the importance of individual…

This paper explores the emotional experiences of elementary school inspections, from the appointment of the first State school inspectors in 1839 to 1911 when Edward Holmes, the retiring chief inspector, signposted the prospects of a new era in elementary education. The paper is arranged in two parts: the first provides an outline of the origins…

The 1923 Constitution prepared the legal framework for Egypt's semi-independence from British imperial control under a newly established liberal monarchy. This Constitution carried a promise for a significant change in setting the ground for a nascent national system of mass elementary education for boys and girls that would also be free of charge…

Building upon an expanding literature on world exhibitions and international conferences as vehicles for the transnational circulation of educational knowledge during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this article discusses the participation of Luxembourg at these events. It focuses on three thematic strands: the representation of…

This article offers the first modern explication of the educational writings of Charles Hoole (1610-1667), arguing that his writings offer significant insight into the educational aims and methods of school instructors in seventeenth-century England. From attending to the needs of slow learners, to promoting learning games, to emphasising that…

Historians have observed that the period 1860-1890 was educationally progressive. This paper identifies the renaissance with the creation of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland in the aftermath of Church Disestablishment. Disestablishment legislation facilitated the inclusion of the laity in Synod. The paper argues that the lay-clerical…

This article analyses the manner in which the physical and sexual energy of the white, native South American and black populations was represented in reading books for elementary school children in Spain and Colombia between 1900 and 1960. Ninety reading books from representative authors were examined. It was found that the ideal of extraordinary…

In 1831, the British Government decided to become directly involved in the provision of elementary education in Ireland, a country over which it then had jurisdiction. By European standards of the time this was a highly unusual step. A number of scholars have interrogated the factors that led to this outcome as well as the role played by various…

This study investigates reading activities in Swedish primary school classrooms during the late 1960s. Sound and video recordings of 223 Swedish lessons held between 1967 and 1969 are used to analyse the activity of reading as taught and performed. The results indicate that the practice of informational reading, often based on finding…

This article investigates the economic aspects of monitorial education in Sweden during the 1820s. In contrast to previous research, which has often emphasised monitorial education as a cheap method of education, this article shows that this was rarely the case. Monitorial education could in fact lead to increased costs, especially during the…

This paper aims to highlight the prominence and relevance attached by the Franco dictatorial regime to emotions and sentiments in primary education textbooks. The authors of school textbooks employed a singular writing style, which enabled them to permeate the regime's ideology within the primary education community and classroom. Overcoming the…

This paper traces the transmission of Western science through the agricultural education sector during the British colonial administration of Malaya. This education system included three levels: elementary, intermediate and the school of agriculture. To understand the process by which Western science was transmitted in Malaya, Basalla's model was…

Greek historiography of interwar education policy unproblematically accepts the assumption that the bone of contention between the "Liberal demoticists" and the "Conservative purists" was the language issue; particularly whether "demotic" or "katharevousa" should be the language of instruction in schooling.…

The Chinese language movement was launched by the Chinese educationists to demand the recognition of Chinese as an official language to legitimise the status of Chinese education in the national education system in Malaysia. It began in 1952 as a response to the British attempt to establish national primary schools teaching in English and Malay to…

Researchers have identified a civilising mission in elementary schools in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, particularly in poor urban areas. School log books from the 14 schools in Birmingham and Leicester, supplemented by other primary and secondary sources, are examined for insights into how headteachers perceived, and acted…