The long history of Montessori education in India dates to 1915, and it was expanded through Maria and Mario Montessori's work in India between 1939 to 1946 and 1947 to 1949. The article characterizes a century of Montessori education in India as a series of "adapted, competing, and contested framings" with key disputes over Montessori…

Many rights struggles have promoted education and learning as proof of citizenship and capacity, and disability rights movements are no exception. Blanche Van Leuven Browne, one early twentieth-century polio survivor, reimagined the possibilities of education for "crippled children" by approaching schooling as not only preparation for…

Progressive education swept across Canada in the early to mid-twentieth century, restructuring schools, introducing new courses, and urging teachers to reorient the classroom to the interests and needs of the learner. The women religious who taught in Vancouver's Catholic schools negotiated the revised public school curriculum, determined to…

Sidney Hook set the terms of debate on Communism, higher education, and academic freedom in the postwar United States. His view that Communists lacked the independence necessary for teaching and research--a view forged in the heated debates of New York City's radical left in the 1930s--provided the rationale for firing Communist professors across…

This article explores the influence of evolutionary ideas, especially Social Darwinism, on G. Stanley Hall's (1844-1924) educational ideas and major writings on gender and race. Hall formed these progressive ideas as he developed an American Social Darwinist pedagogy, embedded in his efforts to create the discipline of psychology, the science of…

The world of private fundamentalist education grew prodigiously throughout the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. These schools needed curricular materials and guiding educational philosophies. The impassioned debates among leading fundamentalist educators directly affected the education of hundreds of thousands of students. Concern over the…

Historical scholarship has traditionally focused on the commonalities uniting Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon, the two leading antebellum women's educational reformers in New England. This essay shifts that focus by contrasting their educational philosophies and exploring the implications their differences had for the development of American…

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 displaced the autocracy of the Romanov royal family and aimed to establish a liberal republican Russia. The Bolsheviks, who came to power a few months later in the revolution of October 1917, announced that their new policy in education "had no analogy in history." Their reforms sought to establish…

In the 1890s progressive educators like John Dewey proposed expansive ideas about integrating school and society. Working to make the boundaries between classroom learning and pupils' natural environment more permeable, for example, Dewey urged teachers to connect intellectual and practical elements within their curricula. Highly visible and…

Samuel Chapman Armstrong is well known for establishing Hampton Institute, the institution most involved with training black teachers in the South after the Civil War. It is less known that he was born in Hawai'i to the missionary couple Reverend Richard and Clarissa Chapman Armstrong. His parents were members of the Fifth Company of missionaries…

World War II stands as a defining moment for American higher education. During the crisis of international relations that existed by the late 1930s, American thinkers of various stripes felt compelled to mobilize the country's intellectual and educational resources in defense of democracy, thus creating "a great ideological revival of democracy…

Anna Julia Cooper and W.E.B. Du Bois were two of the most prominent African-American educators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this period, they both envisioned a broad education tailored specifically to the critical intellectual and vocational needs of the entire black community. In this essay, the author examines common themes…

Traces the private boarding school movement in the United States, discussing its growth and service to a "democratic nobility" which would be trained to lead the country. Examines the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant control of private schools until the 1960s and explores changes in admissions and administration policies. (GEA)

Although some educational progress at grassroot level was made by the Dutch Reformed Church Mission (DRCM) in African Malawi, the DCRM system contributed mostly to underdevelopment. Most Malawians were introduced to semi-literacy under thousands of semi-qualified teachers, and very few Africans who passed through the system later distinguished…

Stresses that a regional approach to history of education can enhance and enrich understanding of education-related issues in other regions and in the United States at large. Case studies from the Southern region are presented to reinforce this view. (DB)