This author describes herself as someone who has questioned the role of theory since she first began studying educational history several decades ago, and who has attempted to use theory. She sees contradictions in what she is researching and how she is doing it, contradictions that arise from her graduate training, the developments in…

In 1827, two years after its incorporation as a college and six years removed from its founding as a "collegiate institution," Amherst College revamped its curriculum into what it called a "parallel course of study." In this new scheme, students were allowed to follow one of two tracks during their college years. Amherst's…

In August 1945, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers. From September 1945 to April 1952, the United States occupied the defeated country. Douglas MacArthur, an American army general and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), attempted to transform Japanese society from an authoritarian regime into a budding democracy.…

Case method teaching was first introduced into American higher education in 1870 by Christopher C. Langdell (1826-1906) of Harvard Law School (HLS), where it became closely associated with a complex of academic meritocratic reforms. "Mr. Langdell's method" became, in fact, emblematic, "creating and embodying cultural values and…

The author introduces William Barton Rogers, conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who pursued two interrelated careers in nineteenth-century America: one centered on his activities in science and the other on his higher educational reform efforts. This essay explores one theme in Rogers' scientific and educational…