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 1923 John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board (GED) undertook a project to reform the public schools in two rural Indiana counties. The GED demonstration project developed from more than two decades of concern about America's rural problems. The attempt by cosmopolitan outside experts to change the rural schools is described. (RM)