This article examines the nature of school days and school years in later medieval Western Europe and considers the societal functions of the temporal cultures that emerged. The forms of the school day and year in elementary and grammar schools--alongside school-and youth-centered festivals--were replete with meaning and possessed utility beyond…

Middle grades education has been the object of efforts to remediate US education to address an array of social problems. Districts have sought out K-8 models to create smaller learning communities, require fewer school transitions, and allow sustained student connections. This paper offers a historical analysis of K-8 schools, drawing on…

In this year's Presidential Address, historian Derrick P. Alridge discusses his current research project, Teachers in the Movement: Pedagogy, Activism, and Freedom. The project builds on recent literature about teachers as activists between 1950 and 1980 and explores how and what secondary and postsecondary teachers taught. Focusing on teachers in…

In February 1899, the Committee of Physical Culture of the Chicago Public School Board approved an intensive "anthropometric" study of all children enrolled in the city's public schools. The study was a detailed attempt to measure the height, weight, strength, lung capacity, hearing, and general fitness of Chicago's student population.…

During the twenty to twenty-five years after World War II, children in the United States were increasingly taught to understand their nation, its history, and its economic greatness--as an "economy"--rather than in social, moral, philosophical, or political terms. During this time period, not only did an economics education movement…