This essay provides a holistic review of what girls and young women learned, and the settings in which they learned, in the Middle Ages in England between the Norman Conquest (1066) and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (late 1530s). Education of girls was carried out in households, elementary schools, and nunneries, as well as through employment…

Margaret Cavendish was an unusually public figure in early modern England. She published widely under her own name on several secular subjects, including natural philosophy, inequality of the sexes, and educational theory. This article explores the development of Cavendish's educational theories through a detailed account of her life, which took…

Mainstream historiography often turns to Europe's era of empire building to explain the expansion of Western formal education in Africa. Popular accounts suggest that in Africa (1) colonial involvement in education was late and short lived, spanning the early decades of the twentieth century, (2) missionaries were largely responsible for early…

In this article, the author discusses her comparative study of the history of the welfare state in the United States, England, and France, she studies some of the usual features of the welfare state, which include important entitlement programs, such as social insurance, and protective labor legislation, but she also focuses on the development of…

Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of university study licenses such as the "Licet canon" and the "Cum ex eo" which, when issued by the Vatican in the 13th century, allowed unordained parochial rectors and ordained priests to obtain higher education. Concludes that study licenses improved the education of the parochial…

Explains the negative response of those in authority to early modern English literature which informally educated the population through "false fonde bookes, ballades, and rimes." This negative response, based on both moral and political grounds, came from clerics who saw such books as detrimental to the social structure of society. (BSR)

The conceptual and cultural background for Puritan opposition to idleness are examined. Also included is a review of the educational ideals portrayed in the sixteenth-century "courtesy literature" (intended for instruction of the aristocracy). A likely source for Puritan views is England rather than New England. (RM)

Educational theory and practice among the most privileged group in English society--the nobility and upper gentry--are examined. Fundamental differences distinguished the humanist program of study for girls from that for boys during the middle years of the sixteenth century. (RM)

Discussed is the unprecedented expansion of educational facilities in 16th and 17th century England. Reasons for the newly endowed schools, freelance teachers and increasing numbers of students proceeding to higher education are investigated. The author concludes that, in spite of some extraordinary successes, the chances of escaping drudgery…

This paper attempts to demonstrate that the question of conformity and rebellion is ultimately one of social and political structure by comparing the demographic and economic class lines of the English Boy Scouts and the German Wandervogel. (Author/KM)

Major changes in British education legislation were given impetus by the 1st and 2nd World Wars. (RA)

A review of nine books on education in Victorian England. (RA)

The historical development of social ecology and ways in which an ecological approach can illuminate the study of urban education are discussed. An interdisciplinary, microecological framework is applied to the study of links between schooling and community in a nineteenth-century dockland slum. (SR)

Examines the history of teaching at the elementary level in England from 1870 to 1910. Social standing of elementary teachers, numbers of male vs. female teachers, and professionalization are discussed. (RM)