This article examines schooling in the western American state of Colorado during the early twentieth century. Conditions of youth and education are examined at the Walsen coal-mining camp near the town of Walsenburg in the southern region of the state. The experiences of children in the camp are compared to with those living in the town, with a…

Schooling in the United States has never been a public good, nor has "the public good" been its primary goal. Since its origins in the early nineteenth century, schooling has been a "white" good, designed to promote white advantage. Three mechanisms, among many, have been key to this process: the relationship of schooling to…

This article argues that the "airlift" language often used to describe the eight hundred Kenyan students who attended US and Canadian universities between 1959 and 1963 is misleading. It assumes that the students were being plucked out of substandard education, yet these youth had received some of the most rigorous education in the…

As scholars of higher education regularly point out, American universities face a fundamental tension between access and exclusion. On the one hand, as publicly supported institutions operating in a democracy, they are charged with promoting social mobility and sharing knowledge that can improve society. On the other, they are tasked with…

How did the undergraduate college rapidly position itself as the gateway to middle-class US employment between 1880 and 1920? This article attempts to explain one part of that process. Drawing on Weberian organisational theory, transnational intellectual history and case studies of three institutions, it identifies hierarchy as a defining aspect…

This essay investigates the development of the boys' magazine, "Our Boys," and how this became a powerful auxiliary to the Christian Brothers' work in schools. It championed the values that the Christian Brothers had propagated since their foundation in 1802. Often characterised as Celtic and Romantic, it was neither, but aimed at…

The Bantu Education system, which replaced missionary-run black schooling in the mid-1950s, expanded schooling to accommodate the basic economic needs of the South African economy but it was done as cheaply as possible. The state paid teachers' salaries and in return it expected obedience and conformity from its employees. It was a tight-fisted,…

Even though the black community of antebellum New York City lived in a society that marginalized them socially and economically, they were intent on pursuing the basic privileges of American citizenship. One tactic African Americans employed to this end was the tenacious pursuit of education, which leaders believed would act both as an aid in…

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…

Education is unquestionably a common necessity. Social movements demand education, as does social mobility, and may well be the expression of utopia. Individuals accept education as an expression of their own desire and validate its intervention as a legitimate criterion for differentiation. Few social sectors do not demand schooling for…

Since Luxembourg became independent in 1839, practically the entire political, economic and intellectual elite of the country has been socialised abroad. It was only in 2003 that the Grand Duchy set up its own university; before then, young Luxembourgers had to study in foreign countries. Over the past 150 years, Luxembourg has thus experienced…

The disciplines of economic history and the history of education have drawn closer since the 1960s. This engagement has led to fresh thematic contributions--the role of literacy and education in the Industrial Revolution and industrialization generally, how far its neglect underlay the "decline" of Britain since 1870, the relation of…

The article discusses the dissemination and reception of a practice-oriented, community-centred approach to colonial education, which was derived from educational concepts developed for African-Americans in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. This approach--which came to be known as "Phelps-Stokesism"--gained wide…

Growing school systems in Montreal and Toronto (Canada) between 1861 and 1881 offered radically different opportunities to men and women. Educational administrators developed bureaucratic modes of organization chiefly with male aspirations for power and social mobility in mind. Women were hired to fill the bottom ranks or were ignored altogether.…

Explores the social context surrounding the popularization of science in nineteenth century America. The author argues that the popularization process was inseparable from the general democratization of Western society which was going on simultaneously. Increased public access to new scientific information was supposed to stimulate…